


What Happened at the Euros

by dierdele



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Euros 2016, M/M, england nt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2019-11-15 02:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18064595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dierdele/pseuds/dierdele
Summary: 'For a split second, Dele can’t think of anything else other than kissing Eric Dier. Beautiful Eric, with his wide, shit-eating grin and his magic laces that just scored the first England goal of the Euros 2016. Dele wants nothing more than to kiss him.'A look back at what happened at the Euros. How a team fell apart while Dele fell in love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, everyone! As most of you will probably know, this fic is a prequel to In This World of Ours. This fic is set two years prior, at the UEFA Euro 2016. While I do try and keep everything as accurate as possible, I've taken a few liberties with this story. Jesse Lingard wasn't at the Euros, Eric wasn't number 4, and Kyle and John probably weren't that close back then. But this is fiction, after all.
> 
> Thank you for all the support on In This World of Ours. I hope this prequel lives up to expectations. All mistakes are mine (and I'm sure there will be a few).
> 
> What Happened at the Euros is told from Dele's point of view. <3 Enjoy!

“You’re not taking _that_ , are you?” Dele asks incredulously, glaring at the green shirt Eric is holding up in front of him. “You can’t wear that. You’ll embarrass me.”

Eric levels him a somewhat offended look but throws the shirt back into the bottom of his wardrobe regardless.

Dele is sitting cross-legged on Eric’s neatly-made bed, clad in black joggers and a white printed t-shirt. He’s half scrolling through Instagram and half helping Eric pack. Well, offering _advice_ on what to pack. More specifically what _not_ to pack. Like that green shirt.

“What about this?” Eric says, holding up a plain black button-down shirt. He’s in nothing but his loose-fitting grey shorts because it’s summer and, as usual, he’s been complaining to no end that his house is too hot.

Dele glances at the shirt. It doesn’t have a label but it doesn’t look cheap, either. Probably from one of those weird upmarket Portuguese boutiques Eric buys his clothes from. It’s actually an okay shirt. Eric wore it on a night out once and Dele remembers he looked nice in it. It actually fits him, which is a good start.

“Yeah, I like that,” Dele replies, nodding affirmatively.

Without needing anything more than that, Eric folds the shirt and drops it into the suitcase that lies open at his feet.

Dele feels a smile tugging at his lips and he’s filled with a sense of smug satisfaction. Eric nearly always complains about Dele’s dress sense, and yet here he is, asking for Dele’s advice on clothing and actually taking it. Dele just wishes he could record this moment for the world to see. Proof that Eric Dier does, in fact, need Dele’s expert opinion once in a while.

“What are you smirking at?” Eric asks, narrowing his gaze at Dele as he folds more clean shirts into his suitcase. He’s sitting on the floor now, legs tucked beneath him, and he’s re-packing his suitcase for the third time tonight.

“Nothing, Diet,” Dele responds, smiling down at him. He crawls forward and peers over the end of the bed into Eric’s suitcase. “How much have you got left to pack?”

“Hm, I need shorts,” Eric mumbles, chewing the inside of his mouth as he thinks out loud. “I don’t know where my blue ones are.”

“Can you hurry up please? I’m hungry and you said we could order Chinese.”

“I said we could order once I’ve packed. I haven’t finished yet.”

Dele shuffles backwards on the bed until he’s leaning up against the headboard. He props Eric’s pillow behind his back and stretches his legs out in front of him, lazily pulling on the tassels of his joggers. He watches Eric sift through some more clothes for a while and then gets bored and picks up his phone to check Snapchat.

“You’re on my story so much today,” Dele points out, hoping Eric will realise what an honour that is.

He watches his story back for the eighteenth time. It starts with a bunch of selfies boasting about going to the Euros, followed by footage of Eric eating a bowl of mango for breakfast, a photo of Eric loading his dishwasher, a series of photos that prove Dele beat Eric at Fifa three times in a row, a quick selfie of them both eating lunch in Eric’s garden, a screenshot of the funny joke Dele’s brother sent him, and then finally an eight-second clip of Dele beating Eric at basketball.

“That’s because you’ve been here all day,” Eric replies, a little too unenthusiastic for Dele’s liking.

“My company is a blessing, you should be grateful,” Dele remarks.  

To entertain himself while Eric continues looking for whatever it is he’s looking for, Dele scrolls through the many embarrassing photos he’s taken of Eric on Snapchat in the past week. He finds one where Eric is grinning with a mouth full of yogurt and shows it to him, smirking.

“Shall I upload this?” Dele asks.

Eric looks up from his position on the floor and simply glares across the room at him. Dele grins widely and laughs out loud as he continues flicking through the photos.

“Why do you even keep these?” Eric whines.

There’s one of Eric asleep on Dele’s sofa that Dele took a few nights ago. Eric had fallen asleep halfway through _The Emperor's New Groove_ . He’s snuggled up with Dele’s fluffy blanket and he looks _so_ dorky. Dele giggles at the photo and glances up to find Eric shaking his head in disapproval.

“Because they’re cute, Diet. And good blackmail material.”

“I’ve got some of you too, you know,” Eric warns.

Dele responds by slyly taking a photo of Eric kneeling by his suitcase looking particularly unimpressed.

“What shall I caption this one?” Dele asks, showing him the photo. He clears his throat and puts on an over-the-top voice in imitation. “ _Mr Grumpy can’t find his fluffy pink pyjamas. Now he sad.”_

Eric responds by throwing a grey sweatshirt at Dele’s face.

“You’re so annoying,” Eric sighs.

Dele catches the sweatshirt and holds it out for inspection. It’s the sweatshirt that Eric accidentally put in the dryer a few months ago and shrunk, and he’s never worn it since. Why he hasn’t just thrown it out, Dele still doesn't know. But regardless, he leans forward and pulls the sweater over his head. It fits him perfectly.

“Can I have this?” He asks in a more serious tone, bunching the sleeves up around his fists.

Eric turns and opens his mouth to say something, but then stops in his tracks when he sees Dele wearing the sweater. He looks Dele up and down for a moment and then simply shrugs and nods. “If you want it."

Dele waits until Eric has turned back to face the wardrobe before quickly bringing his hands to his face. He sniffs the sleeves, inhaling Eric’s familiar fabric conditioner. It draws a smile out of him because Eric has used the same fabric conditioner since the day Dele met him, and this is _so_ Eric’s smell.

While Eric rummages around in his wardrobe, Dele climbs off the bed and starts moving around Eric’s room in his sweater. He picks up the trophies on Eric’s chest of drawers and studies each one. They span his entire career, right from the first “Young Player of the Month” award he got from Sporting when he was nine years old.

Dele runs his finger across Eric’s name and smiles to himself. Eric likes to pretend awards and accolades aren’t important to him, but Dele knows it’s all just a front. Eric needs positive reinforcement just as much as the next guy, which is why he’s also kept the fake Man of the Match trophy that Dele made him from an empty water bottle after Eric assisted Dele’s goal in training a few weeks back.

“Cute that you kept this, Diet,” Dele says as he holds out the makeshift trophy. Eric turns to look over his shoulder and laughs a little, shrugging as if it’s nothing.  

“Thought I should keep it for a few weeks, at least.”

He says that, but Dele knows this trophy will still be here six months from now. He sets it back on the cabinet and moves over to the modern-looking bookcase on his right.

Eric reads books that Dele has never heard of and never _will_ hear of. There’s a stylish mix of Portuguese and English books, mostly non-fiction, covering everything from London architecture to abstract oil paintings to the best Spanish home cooked recipes. There are some fiction books thrown in for good measure, too. The limited-edition Harry Potter collection right at the bottom is the only set of books Dele can actually say he’s heard of. Even if he’s only seen the movies.

“These ones?” Eric asks, pulling Dele’s attention away from the bookshelf. He’s holding up a pair of bright blue shorts and waiting for Dele’s assessment.

“They’re a bit too 2014,” Dele says, wincing dramatically. “I’ve definitely seen better.”

“Which ones then?” Eric sighs, dropping the shorts in defeat. Dele rolls his eyes and walks over to him, nudging him out the way so he can properly pull apart the contents of the wardrobe.

He goes through a variety of unflattering and oversized shorts before he finally finds the pale pink pair he had in mind. Eric has worn these a bunch of times and they still actually look good on him.

“These ones.” Dele hands over the shorts and Eric folds them up and places them neatly in the suitcase.

“Think I’m done, then.” Eric smiles. He pats Dele on the back and lets his hand linger for a moment. Dele turns and grins at him.

“Can we get takeaway now?”

\--

Dele is a nervous ball of energy the entire drive to the airport. He sits in Eric’s passenger seat and fiddles with the music and the air conditioning, trying to find the perfect temperature. He doesn’t want the windows down too much because it will mess his hair up, but it’s also 25 degrees outside and Eric’s air conditioning is _definitely_ faulty.

“You need a new car,” Dele sighs, stabbing at the AC button a little impatiently. It’s nice of Eric to drive them to the airport and everything, but Dele is literally being cooked alive right now.

“You want to get out and walk?” Eric asks, swatting Dele’s hand away from the controls. He switches the dial to its coldest setting and turns up the music when _Wake Me Up_ by Avicii comes on over the radio.

“So you reckon you’ll get a girlfriend in France?” Dele asks idly, watching the trees and fields blur by outside. “Are French girls even pretty?”

“Yes, but I’m not there to get a girlfriend,” Eric replies, laughing even though he’s trying to keep his tone serious. “I’m going purely for the croissants.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music and Dele watches him from behind his sunglasses, smiling to himself. _You’re so lame,_ he thinks fondly.

“True. You can’t even get one here.”

Eric shoves his shoulder and Dele beams at him.

“I’m excited, Diet.”

“Me too, Delboy.”

“You think we’re going to win?”

Eric glances at him and ruffles his hair with his free hand, even though Dele has told him a _million_ times not to do that.

“With me and you in midfield? Definitely we’re gonna win,” Eric says confidentently and without hesitation. “We’re the dream team, Del!”  

Dele turns to smile at him. It’s still roasting in this car and Eric is drumming on the steering wheel and singing along to the music a little off key, but it’s in moments like this that Dele feels incredibly grateful to have a best friend like Eric.

\--

Dele loves flying.

Eric doesn’t really care for it and usually tries to put his headphones in to block everyone out, but on momentous occasions like this, Dele isn’t having any of it. He pulls on the wire, sending Eric’s headphones tumbling into his lap, and grins at him when Eric gives him an affronted look.

“Talk to me!” Dele whines. “Stop being so unsociable.”

“You’ve spent the last 48 hours in my company. You really want more time with me?” Eric sighs, but he begins to wrap up his headphones and places them back in his bag.

Dele blushes a little and falls silent. Eric’s right; they have spent the last 48 hours together and now Dele feels a little embarrassed that he’s still pining for Eric’s attention. He briefly considers if he should actually leave Eric alone for a while and go sit with Harry or Lallana or someone, but then Eric pulls out a pack of Uno cards and turns in his seat to better face Dele.

“Ready?” Eric asks, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“Loser has to buy the first round of croissants,” Dele answers with a childish smile. Eric winks at him and quickly agrees to the terms.

During the fourth match (in which Dele is currently 3-0 up), the new senior squad photographer - whose name Dele doesn’t know yet - walks down the plane and stops at Dele’s row, leaning his elbow on the seat in front. He waits as Dele throws down a devastating +4 card, and then finally Dele and Eric both turn to him.

“Hi,” Eric greets a little awkwardly as Dele presses his mouth into a small, polite smile.

Dele is pretty sure this photographer only started a month ago, and he looks about 15. He’s got curly black hair and a wide, cheeky grin. He’s also just idly standing next to them, watching their Uno game like they’re all friends and this isn’t kind of weird.  

“You want to play?” Dele asks eventually, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

The photographer looks at Dele for a moment, confused, and then laughs and shakes his head. “No, no. I just wanted to show you the photos I took of you earlier.”

The photographer gets his camera out and begins loading up the photos. “This one is going to be used on the England website’s homepage from tomorrow.”

Dele leans forward in his seat to see the photo that the photographer is showing them. It’s the photo that he took of Dele and Eric as they were walking up to the plane, the one where he caught them off guard but then Eric asked him to take another one, and this time he threw an arm around Dele’s shoulder and they both smiled at the camera. Eric is wearing his red England jacket but Dele has his tied around his waist (he still hadn’t cooled down after being almost cooked alive in Eric’s car). They’re both squinting against the sun and Dele remembers how Eric had kept his arm around his shoulders even after the photographer had got the photo.

“It’s nice, I like that!” Eric enthuses, leaning uncomfortably close over Dele to see the photo. Dele frowns at him for completely invading his personal space but doesn’t bother putting up any verbal complaint. “And they want that on the website?”

“Yeah. The new faces of England,” the photographer says as he cycles through the three other photos he got of Dele and Eric when they weren’t looking.

“Can I have that one now?” Eric asks, nodding to the original photo of them both smiling. “I want to put it on on my Instagram.”

“Sure.” The photographer replies, shrugging casually. “I’ll send it over DM when we land.”

“Thanks, Dan!” Eric says brightly. He reaches out across Dele to perform a quick yet elaborate handshake with the photographer.

Dele stares in shock, overcome with a fierce jealousy and genuine surprise. He waits until the photographer has walked away before turning angrily to Eric.

“What the hell was _that?”_ Dele demands. Eric shrugs innocently and laughs at Dele’s obvious envy.

“What was what?” He asks.

“That _handshake_. You and him flirting!” Dele replies bluntly. He’s completely joking, of course, but for some reason he can’t seem to set aside the fake-jealous act. “How do you know his name? When did you make a handshake?” Dele continues.

Eric scratches the back of his neck and laughs out loud. “It’s Dan, he’s been our photographer for over a year, Del.”

Dele opens his mouth to say something but can’t come up with any sort of legitimate argument. A year!? How has Dele never even got the guy’s name and why is this the first time he’s seen Eric and this _Dan_ guy interacting?

“Well… still,” Dele sinks into his seat and folds his arms across his chest defensively. He knows he’s sulking, knows Eric can _see_ him sulking, and he has no intention of stopping until Eric reassures him.

“Don’t worry, I don’t like him more than you,” Eric says without missing a beat. There’s an inflection in his voice that implies this is all just a joke, and it is, of course, but Dele still feels better for hearing it. He curls his mouth into a grin and leans forward, reaching for the Uno cards and shuffling them quickly in his hands.

“5-0 and you have to publicly declare me the Uno goat.”

“It’s not going to happen,” Eric says confidently. He lifts his gaze to meet Dele’s and then looks back down at the cards in his hands. “This is going to be my lucky round.”

\--

It’s 10pm when they finally get to the hotel in Marseille.

There’s an issue with passport control that results in a 45-minute delay, and then John Stones begins to complain that some of his luggage is missing (before he realises he’s actually just left his carry-on bag on the plane), so that sets them back, too.

By the time they finally get to the coach, Dele is tired and irritable. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone, he doesn’t want to play Uno with Kyle and John, and he doesn’t want to watch The Matrix on the TV at the back of the bus. He just wants to be left alone so he can sleep.

Only Eric is permitted to sit next to him, and that’s on the condition that he doesn’t gloat about his unexpected Uno comeback on the plane. Eric adheres to the conditions and puts his headphones in, passing a blanket across to Dele before settling down into his own seat.

The coach to the hotel is on a long, boring, and bumpy road. Dele almost falls asleep on Eric at least eight times, but then some unexpected pot hole or loud car horn jolts him awake. He groans against Eric’s shoulder and Eric covers his head with his red jacket to help block out the lights.

Dele goes in and out of sleep for a while, dreaming of football matches and penalty shoot outs and never-ending plane rides. He dreams that Eric has gone missing in France, and then that the England team have gone into a penalty shootout and lose because Dele hits the crossbar. Consciousness comes and goes, and whenever he wakes up, he’s cuddled up a little closer to Eric. It takes a while, but he finally accepts that sleeping on Eric is much more comfortable than sleeping against the window. And Eric doesn't seem to mind that much.

When they finally arrive at the hotel, Dele is still dreaming of the penalty shootout. He wakes up when he feels someone shaking his shoulder, and he’s a little surprised and embarrassed to find himself asleep against Eric’s chest with Eric’s arm wrapped around his shoulders. The red jacket that Eric had covered Dele’s head with is now clutched tightly against Dele’s chest.

“Sorry,” he mumbles sleepily, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. Eric brushes it off with a small, endearing laugh and points out that Dele has had a long day.  

Their room in the hotel is on the fifth floor, next door to John and Kyle. John invites Dele and Eric into their room to hangout, but Dele instantly turns down the offer, insisting he’s too tired to do anything other than go straight to bed. They ask Eric, but he follows in Dele’s footsteps, saying he’s just going to call it a night.

“Boring, lads,” John mutters as they all walk down the corridor to their rooms. “I expected better from you, Dele.”

“He’s getting old,” Kyle chimes, but he waves them both goodbye before shoving John through the door of Room 206.

Dele mumbles under his breath about how annoying John is these days, but stops short when he feels Eric grab a hold of his arm. He wonders what he’s done wrong, why Eric has stopped him in the corridor, but then he realises that Eric is gesturing towards the door of their hotel room.

“204, this is us,” Eric says as he reaches into his back pocket for the key card. Dele looks at the numbers on the door and reads them through a sleepy hazy. _This is us,_ he thinks, _twenty and four._

Eric leads him inside and Dele is only half aware of throwing down his suitcase, stripping off his clothes, changing into his pyjama shorts, and collapsing on the double bed closest to the window.

“You want me to open this?” Eric’s voice asks from somewhere in the room. Dele has his eyes closed so doesn’t know what Eric is talking about, but he assumes he must mean the window seeing as it’s a million degrees in their hotel room, so he hums affirmatively and gathers up the spare pillows to cuddle up against.

The next thing Dele registers is the sound of French voices talking low in the background. He thinks he must be dreaming until he hears Eric laughing to himself. With all the effort he has left in his body, he forces himself to open his eyes.

Through his blurry vision, he can just about see Eric on the bed next to him watching the TV in the dark, his face lit up in the soft glow of the television. Dele sits up on his bed and groans into his hands. “Diet, what you doing?” He asks, his voice croaky from sleep.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I’ll turn it off,” Eric replies quickly, already reaching for the remote. “I couldn’t sleep yet.”

“S’okay,” Dele says. He doesn’t know why but he finds himself climbing off his bed and stumbling towards Eric’s. “It’s cold,” he mumbles. Then he’s falling onto Eric’s bed and resting his head on the spare pillow next to Eric.

“I can close the window if you’re cold?” Eric offers, but Dele shakes his head. He likes the fresh air and the distant sound of the wind in the trees.

“Just cold,” Dele repeats. He reaches for the pillows again so he can cuddle up to them, but he’s left them on his own bed, and the only thing now within his grasp is Eric. He grabs at Eric’s white t-shirt, tugging on it before he realises he’s lying on Eric’s bed and his hand is now resting on Eric’s chest.   

“You okay, Del?” Eric asks softly. His voice is far away and he’s saying something else about the duvet and the windows but Dele can’t quite hear him. He’s getting quieter and quieter, and then his voice is gone.

The TV is gone, the wind in the trees is gone, everything is gone.

It’s just darkness. That, and the gentle rise and fall of Eric’s chest beneath Dele’s hand.


	2. Chapter 2

Dele wakes up holding pillows.

His vision is gauzy and it takes him a few seconds to realise he’s been rudely awakened by the alarm on his phone. The room is still and dark, except for the quiet glow of morning sunshine that seeps in around the edges of the black-out curtains.

Dele turns over in his bed, fumbling to find the bedside table and his phone. The alarm continues to ring, but Dele can’t figure out where he left the phone. In the process of trying to remember where the hell he is and where the vibrating phone is, he accidentally knocks a lamp off the bedside table, and then a bottle of water to follow.

“Fuck,” Dele mumbles, rubbing his eyes and trying to properly wake himself up. His legs are tangled in the sheets and he still can’t find the phone.

“What are you doing?” Eric’s voice suddenly asks from across the room. It’s gravelly, tired, and sounds like it’s coming from the other bed.

Dele sits upright and finds a switch next to the bed. He pushes it, hoping it will turn the lamp on, but it turns the ceiling light on instead and he thinks he might have actually just blinded himself. Eric groans loudly somewhere to Dele’s right.

“My phone…” Dele begins. Eric takes the vibrating phone from his bedside table and passes it to Dele, squinting as he tries to adjust to light.

Dele turns off the alarm and then immediately reaches for the light switch. It’s 7:30am. He must have forgotten to turn the alarm off that he’d set for his early start yesterday.

It’s only when his head hits the pillow again that Dele realises he’s in the wrong bed. He’s in Eric’s bed, and Eric is now in the bed closest to the window, the one Dele had originally claimed. He vaguely remembers waking up in the night and climbing into Eric’s bed, but he doesn’t know why. He thinks he might have been cold. The windows were open, or the air conditioning was on. Either way, he’d crawled beneath Eric’s duvet and fallen asleep with Eric next to him.

_But you moved,_ Dele thinks. _You were here, and now you’re over there._

Before he can think anymore of it, he’s slipping back into a deep sleep.

\--

Eric’s alarm rings at 9am.

Dele stirs, recognising the upbeat Portuguese jingle, and pulls the duvet high over his head in an attempt to block it out. He closes his eyes and wills the music to stop, but it keeps going and going, and then Eric’s voice is singing along to it, louder than the actual song and completely off-key.

With a dramatic sigh, Dele lowers the duvet and finds Eric pottering around the room with just a white towel wrapped loosely around his waist. His blonde hair hangs in front of his face, dripping water down his chest, and he’s still singing along happily to the jingle that Dele has heard a million times now.  

Dele watches him for a moment and then hums in annoyance, glaring across the room.

“Bonjour le monde!” Eric greets excitedly when he sees that Dele has woken up. “Prêt pour le football?”

Dele stares at him, wondering why his brain can’t comprehend the words that are coming out of Eric’s mouth, and then he realises it’s because Eric is speaking another language. Portuguese? No, he’s heard Eric speak Portuguese enough to recognise it instantly. Must be French, then.

“It’s too early for French, Diet,” Dele mutters, sitting up in bed and bunching up the duvet in his lap. He’s woken up with an erection, which isn’t unusual, but not exactly ideal when your best friend is in the room. “Can you turn your alarm off, please?”

“You don’t like _É Sempre Você_?” Eric asks, pretending to be surprised. He gets up to turn off his alarm and then crouches down in front of his suitcase at the foot of Dele’s bed, rummaging around in search of his training kit.

Dele rubs his eyes and then stretches his arms out to ease the stiffness out of his joints. They’ve got a full day of training ahead and he knows they’re going to be put through their paces. He tells himself he should probably get up and shower, but for some reason he finds himself sitting idly in bed instead, just watching Eric sift through his belongings, his hair still wet and dripping down into his suitcase.

While he waits for his erection to die down, Dele grabs his phone from the bedside table and begins scrolling through his messages. One by one, he swipes through the notifications on his phone. He clears them until only one remains - a Snapchat from Eric.

He opens the app and loads the Snap. It’s a picture of Dele asleep next to Eric, and Eric is holding out his arm, taking a photo of them both. Eric is pulling an amused face at the camera and you can clearly see that Dele’s hand is resting on Eric’s chest. The caption reads “Wiped out”.

Dele feels his chest tighten and his mouth curls into a nervous smile. It’s a cute picture, and one he had no idea Eric had taken. He looks at Eric’s amused grin in the photo and can’t help but wonder why Eric eventually moved to the other bed. It’s not like they’ve never shared a bed before.

“Ready for petit déjeuner?” Eric asks as he zips up his suitcase and steps into a pair of black boxers beneath his towel.

Dele’s attention is inexplicably torn between the Snap on his phone and Eric getting dressed. He looks at Eric for a moment and feels himself spacing out, and by the time he looks back at his phone, the ten seconds are up and the Snap is gone.

Dele drops the phone into his lap with a short sigh and lifts his gaze back to Eric.

“Si,” He answers, feeling somewhat proud that he knows what Eric is asking him. He doesn’t know a lot of French, but he knows that petit déjeuner means breakfast. “Si, ready.”

“Close!” Eric laughs. “It’s _oui._ ”

Dele rolls his eyes because, well, _whatever._ He’s not here for language lessons, he’s here to play football.

Eric stands up, drops his towel, and pulls his England training shirt over his head, rolling the material down across his chest and stomach. His fingers comb through his wet hair, brushing it back, and there’s water droplets still glistening on the side of his neck.

_You’re so annoying,_ Dele thinks, even though Eric hasn’t actually done anything. He rubs the side of his face with his hand and sighs again. He’s still got an erection and he can already hear Kyle and John bickering next door.

“I’m going in the shower,” Dele says, quickly sliding out of bed and dashing to the bathroom while Eric is busying himself putting socks on. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Don’t be late, Delboy!” Eric calls back.

\--

After six hours of training under the blazing sunshine in the south of France, Dele is completely exhausted.

He collapses on the scorching training pitch, lying flat on his back, and pours the remainder of his water over his head and through his hair in an attempt to cool himself down.

He sighs and closes his eyes, letting the sun and the heat wash over him for a moment. The water is cool in his hair and around him he can hear the lazy chatter of his teammates. Kyle and John are squabbling over something, Jesse is loudly challenging Marcus to a dance off, Harry and Kieran and Vardy are shouting instructions at each other as part of their set piece drills, and Adam Lallana is laughing somewhere in the background, probably with Jordan Henderson.

Dele keeps his eyes closed and lets the noise blur into the background. He focuses on his own breathing until his heart rate slows to a more stable level and he feels himself getting sleepy.

He thinks about the three goals he scored in training today and if he’ll be able to score like that in the real matches. He thinks about how many fans will turn up, what he’d do if he ever saw a teammate get knocked out, and which of the two beds he’s supposed to sleep in tonight.

When he opens his eyes, he’s surprised to see Eric standing directly over him, looking down with a smirk on his face. Dele holds his hand up towards the sky, trying to block the glaring sunlight from his eyes.

“We’re going for dinner,” Eric says. He holds out a hand to Dele and Dele takes it, letting Eric pull him to his feet.

“Where?” Dele asks as he brushes himself down and attempts to neaten his hair. Eric begins to walk back over to Kyle and John and Dele hurries after him, still trying to brush the grass from his legs.

“French restaurant on the boulevard,” Eric answers. He stops for a moment to let Dele catch up.

When Dele reaches him, Eric slings an arm around his shoulders and roughly brings Dele to his side, ruffling his hair playfully. Dele presses a hand against Eric’s side to try and pry himself away, but Eric clings to him, too strong for Dele to overpower. Dele isn’t _that_ bothered about getting away, so he gives up trying after a few seconds and matches his stride with Eric’s. “I’m going to make you try some frogs legs, Del.”

“You are absolutely not,” Dele grimaces. “Who’s going?”

“You, me, Kyle, John, and H,” Eric replies, nodding to where Harry has now gathered with John and Kyle. “He’s third-wheeling.”

Dele rolls his eyes but can’t stop the smile that creeps up on him. “ _Fifth_ wheeling,” he corrects.

\--

Harry is, indeed, fifth wheeling.

Around 7pm, they all go to a local, upmarket restaurant on the coast and sit in a reserved area of the pristine gardens. It has the most beautiful view of the sea, and in the distance there’s a marina and a dock where yachts sit lazily on the waves, their lights twinkling against the sunset. There’s a cool sea breeze blowing in and the restaurant is playing some romantic French accordion music. Dele actually feels like he’s living in a French movie set.

Next to him, Eric is picking at the bread basket, pulling off chunks of bread and popping them in his mouth. He’s laughing with Harry about something, mouth stretched into an amused grin. He’s wearing a billowy white shirt and the pale pink shorts that Dele picked out of his wardrobe for him. His Ray Ban sunglasses are perched slightly crooked on top of his head.

He suits the continental life. Always has done.

Dele reaches out and straightens the sunglasses, causing Eric to lose his trail of thought mid-way through his sentence. He turns to give Dele an appreciative smile and Dele can’t resist taking the bread from between his fingers and shoving it in his own mouth.

“Tasty,” Dele says with his mouth full. Eric lightly shoves him, but he’s in too much of a good mood to actually be annoyed at Dele eating his food.

“What do you think, Del?” Harry asks, turning his attention to Dele while Kyle and John continue messing around at the end of the table with fake French accents. “Which era would you like to have been born in?”

Harry is wearing a casual grey shirt and white shorts, complete with what Dele can only describe as dad sandals. His hair hangs floppy in front of his forehead and he’s already caught the sun, giving him a golden glow. Just like Eric, Harry looks happy here.  

Dele looks between Eric and Harry, not sure if this is actually a serious question. _Why do you talk about such boring things?_ Dele thinks to himself.

“Well… this era,” Dele answers eventually, as if the answer is totally obvious. “Why would you want to be born in any other era?”

“Why this era?” Harry questions.

“He couldn’t live without Snapchat,” Eric answers before Dele can even open his mouth.

Dele shrugs, because yeah, he can’t imagine living without social media or his phone. Not to mention his PlayStation, his power shower, and the heated seats in his car.

“Of course,” Harry laughs, and then he focuses back on Eric for a moment, carefully popping an olive into his mouth as he talks. “Your Snapchat was very cute last night. _Wiped out.”_

Dele swallows around the lump in his throat. He hadn’t considered that Eric had actually sent that to other people.

“He was asleep for about an hour and then he randomly woke up and got in my bed, didn’t you Del?” Eric says fondly.

Dele can feel himself blushing but he shrugs it off. “It was cold,” he says defiantly.

“What’s the French word for _stupid pencil boy_?” Kyle suddenly asks across the table.

John digs him in the ribs and acts overly offended. “You’re the one who thought Ipswich was in Sweden!” He exclaims. “Sorry if I don’t know the intricacies of French geography.”

Dele leans back in his chair and zones out the arguing. It’s classic John and Kyle, getting each other worked up until one of them cracks and they both collapse in a fit of giggles. Earlier it was because Kyle suggested John was the skinniest guy in the restaurant. Now, it’s because John has told Kyle that the islands off the south coast of France are actually Greece.

“John, _John,_ you’ve _been_ to Greece,” Kyle points out, shaking his head.

John slumps in his seat and sulks behind his sunglasses.  

“How many of these have you eaten, Diet?” Dele asks quietly, leaving Harry to deal with the geography dispute.

Eric shuffles away from the argument and moves closer to Dele. He takes the last bread roll from the basket and turns it over in his hands, thinking.

“Four, maybe?” He answers, looking to Dele for confirmation.

Dele rolls his eyes and laughs. “You’re going to get fat out here.”

“I’m a growing boy,” Eric argues. He splits the bread roll in half and hands the bigger half to Dele. “You need to fatten up.”

“I’m perfect the way I am. _Peak_ physical health,” Dele says, exaggerating his words, but he takes half the bread roll and eats it anyway. “So, what era did you choose?”

“90s, as long as I’m living in Portugal.”

“Of course you picked the 90s. You’re so boring.” Dele clicks his tongue and leans back in his seat. “When’s our food coming?”

“Be patient, Delboy. You’ve got good bread, good views, and good company. Stop trying to rush this beautiful evening,” Eric answers, his tone edging towards patronising.

Dele wants to sigh at how lame Eric is, but then he looks past Eric and catches a glimpse of the sea behind him, of the gorgeous sunset that has painted the sky orange. There’s pretty music, it’s the perfect temperature, and there’s food on the way. So Dele can’t really complain. And he supposes the company isn’t all that bad, either.

Eric reaches across the table and picks up the water bottle to fill up Dele’s half-empty cup. He sets it down in front of him and says, “You know, I’m going to take you to Portugal one day. I think you’ll like it.”

Dele shrugs as if he hasn’t been waiting for Eric to suggest this for _months._ “I’ll think about it,” he says nonchalantly.

Eric looks at him until Dele can no longer hide the smile he’s biting back.

\--

The sun has long set by the time they’ve all finished their 5-course dinner. John and Kyle have settled into a food coma and are no longer bickering, Harry and Eric are discussing the wine menu, and Dele is just sitting back in his seat and watching the boats come and go from the dock, their lights still twinkling against the soft, rolling waves of the French Riviera.  

It’s still warm outside, warm enough that Dele doesn’t feel the need to get up and leave anytime soon, even though it’s now approaching 9pm. He’s quite happy just watching the world go by, listening to soft accordion music and Harry and Eric’s debate about the best and worst of French wines.  

“Hey, Del,” John says, leaning forward on his elbows and chewing on a cocktail stick. “You up for a quick Uno tourno tonight? Kyle wants to put actual money on.”

“Kyle wants to beat your ass and have you pay for it, mate,” Kyle corrects, pursing his lips in classic Kyle fashion.

John exhales slowly and shakes his head in annoyance, but there’s a playfulness to it. “Yeah, whatever, mate. You in, Del?”

Dele briefly glances at Eric, wondering if Eric will mind having Kyle and John over in their room tonight. If Eric is tired, he gets exceptionally grumpy about being kept awake, but he’s in a pretty animated conversation about the best French wines and he isn’t staring off into the distance like he usually does when he’s tired, so Dele figures he’s got another few hours in him yet.

“Yeah, come to our room when we get back. Loser pays for the next dinner out.”

“John’s getting a bit cold so we’re going to get in a taxi. Is everyone ready to go?” Kyle asks. He turns to John and rubs his arm to warm him up. John smiles gratefully at him in return. Dele honestly has no idea how they so easily manage to switch from bickering children to old married couple in a matter of seconds, but it’s almost nauseating.

“I’m ready to go,” Harry says, nodding. He finishes the last of his water and leaves a €100 tip for each of the three waiters.

“It’s a nice evening,” Eric says to Dele, his voice quiet. Dele nods in agreement, waiting for Eric to continue. “Why don’t we walk back?”

“John’s cold,” Dele says, but he knows Eric isn’t talking about John.

“Well, they can get a taxi, and me and you could walk back?”

Dele looks around as if he needs a moment to consider his options. It’s only when Kyle and John are walking away from the table that Dele finally turns to them.

“Me and Eric are going to walk back,” he calls out, hoping they won’t change their mind about getting a taxi.

Kyle looks down the long string of restaurants that line the promenade, probably trying to assess how long it will take them, and then simply shrugs. “We’ll send out the navy if you’re not back in an hour.”

John, Kyle, and Harry all slide into the back of a taxi while Eric and Dele head down to the sea front. It’s a beautiful night and Dele is actually looking forward to walking off his dinner under the stars.

The beach is quiet, left alone by the tourists who have opted instead for the glitzy bars and quaint restaurants opposite it. There’s a black railing that separates the promenade from the 4ft drop down to the beach, and both Eric and Dele wordlessly agree to lean against it for a minute, quietly watching the waves crash against the sand in the distance.

The sea breeze brushes through their hair and leaves their cheeks flushed. Dele loves it here, where there is always a haze of melodic French piano combined with easy laughter in the background, where nobody stops him and asks for photos, where beaches lie empty and calm beneath a clear sky of glittering stars.

As he presses into the railing a little more, longing to be closer to the waves, Dele decides he’s going to buy a house here one day. Maybe he and Eric can share it, and they can come here on holiday and dine out at ludicrously expensive restaurants. They can learn French and swim in the sea every morning. It will be just theirs.

As Dele daydreams about his future Marseille holiday home, Eric stands next to him and takes a few photos of the sea on his phone. Dele watches him fondly, noting the way Eric’s face scrunches up when he’s concentrating on getting the best possible photo. He’s still smiling to himself when Eric suddenly turns the camera on him, grins at him from behind the lens, and tells him to wave. Dele does. He waves and smiles and says, “Are you filming me, you big goof?”

Eric shakes his head and turns the screen to Dele, showing him the photo of Dele happily waving at the camera in front of the beach.

“New phone background?” Dele suggests with a wink.

Eric humours his joke a little. “Oh, definitely!” He says, but then he loops his arm around Dele’s and begins walking him down the promenade.

“Would be nice to have a little house here, wouldn’t it?” Dele says, sighing longingly. He has to walk a little quicker to keep up with Eric’s pace but he ensures their arms stay hooked around one another.

“Yeah, I’d like a place here.”

“Buy one then,” Dele says simply. Eric knows more about owning property abroad, so it would actually be much easier if Eric owned the holiday home and just gave Dele a set of keys.

“I’d get lonely. I don’t know many people here.”

“I’d come live with you.”

“Yeah?” Eric asks brightly, turning to look at Dele.

“Yeah,” Dele answers. He would move here with Eric in a heartbeat. Call it love at first sight, but Dele is just about ready to pack up his apartment in North London and book his French language lessons.

Eric grins at him and pulls his phone out of his pocket again. “Let’s get a photo,” he says excitedly.

Dele beams when Eric holds the phone up to take a selfie of them both, their arms still linked, the gentle breeze in their hair, and the long promenade stretching out behind them. It’s usually Dele taking the photos and Eric complaining about it, but tonight it’s Eric who coaxes Dele into the frame. It’s Eric that leans his head closer and then snaps a photo of them both grinning.

Eric saves the photo and then even adds it to his Snapchat story. Dele nudges him with his elbow and raises his eyebrows.

“Is this a special occasion?” Dele asks, laughing lightly. Eric shrugs and smiles.

“I’m allowed to use Snapchat too.”

Dele knows Eric is allowed to use Snapchat. He knows because Eric used it just last night, when Dele had crawled into his bed. And it’s still playing on Dele’s mind because he has no idea how many people Eric sent that photo to. Not that it matters, or that it’s anything embarrassing or weird, because Dele and Eric have always had that sort of friendship. It’s more the fact that Eric never stayed. That’s the part Dele keeps pausing over.

“Hey, Diet, you know the stars,” Dele says suddenly, noticing the familiar constellations in the sky. Eric points them out to him at home and tells him their names, but Dele forgets every time. He points up at one glowing particularly bright. “What’s that one?”

“That is, erm, Androme...Dele,” Eric says, clearing his throat as if he’s being deadly serious. Dele turns to frown at him.

“ _Andromedele_?”

“Sorry, Andromo _dier,_ ” Eric corrects, smirking.

“Right. They named the stars after you, I forgot,” Dele laughs and shakes his head disbelievingly. “But what actually is it?”

“Vega,” Eric says, gazing up into the sky. When he looks back ahead, he suddenly stops in the middle of the promenade and unlinks himself from Dele to point at something a few meters in front of them. It’s a set of stone steps that lead down to the beach.

Eric looks to Dele and Dele grins in response.

They peel off their shoes and socks and run out onto the sand together, yelping when they step into shallows of the freezing water. Dele lets it wash around his ankles and tries to kick the water at Eric, but Eric is a few meters away from him, laughing in delight.

“It’s freezing!” Dele complains, but he’s smiling and he doesn't really care that the water is cold.

Eric shakes his head and holds his arms up to the sky. “It’s _beautiful!_ ” he says enthusiastically.

Dele retreats out of the water and places his shoes and socks a little way back on the sand. He’s about to walk back out to the water, but he pauses on the spot when he sees Eric silently gazing up into the sky. Dele watches him for a while and wonders what Eric is thinking about. He wonders if the stars are looking back at them.

Eric suddenly drops his gaze down into the water, almost sad, and Dele wants to ask him why, but he can’t bring himself to move just yet or intrude on Eric’s solitude. He’s watching Eric watch the water, each wave rolling out, breaking on the sand, and then withdrawing.

_What are you thinking about, Eric Dier?_

When he finally walks back up to Eric, Dele picks a small shell up from down by his feet. He rubs the sand off of it, revealing its smooth, porcelain-white interior.

“This is for you,” Dele says softly, handing the shell to Eric. Eric takes it and turns it over in his hand, studying it. “Keep it forever.”

“I will,” Eric promises. He touches the smooth interior and lets the shell sit in his palm for a second. It looks tiny in his hand, and for a moment Dele worries that Eric might throw it away or drop it into the waves, but then he folds his fingers over it gently and slips it into his pocket for safe keeping.

“So, when are we buying this house?” Eric asks, shooting Dele a small smile before turning to pick up his shoes and socks. He sets off down the beach, paddling through the shallows, and Dele jogs to catch up with him.

“I’m ready when you are, Diet,” Dele says.

Eric bends down to pick up a shell and blows the sand off of it. He turns and hands it to Dele, grinning. “This is for you. Keep it forever.”


	3. Chapter 3

John and Kyle might be the most annoying married couple Dele has ever met.  

Back at the hotel, they chase each other around Dele and Eric’s room, trying to grab each other’s shirts because Kyle is insistent that John is an XS and John is claiming otherwise. At least a medium, he’s saying. Which is why Kyle is now grabbing at John’s shirt while John contorts his body away from him, leaping across the room in a fit of breathless giggles and knocking over one of the chairs in the process.

“Just take your shirt off and prove it!” Kyle demands loudly.

John covers his mouth because he’s laughing so much. It’s absolutely ridiculous, but even Dele and Eric are finding the whole thing hilarious now that John has gotten himself so worked up. Kyle keeps jabbing at John’s ribs - knowing that John is excessively ticklish - and John shrieks every time.  

Dele is sitting on the end of his bed cross-legged, filming the ongoing scene for his Snapchat story. Eric is chuckling to himself in the background, sitting on the same bed as Dele but with his back up against the headboard, his legs stretched out in front of him and clad in black joggers. Every now and then, he nudges Dele with his foot and smiles widely at him.

“Who won the Uno tourno, Diet?” Dele asks smugly, turning the camera on Eric. Eric tries to kick the phone out of his hands as he shys away from the camera, but Dele keeps a tight hold of it and repeats his question. “Come on, Diet, tell everyone who won.”

“Kyle won the first round,” Eric answers nonchalantly. Dele glares at him from behind his phone until Eric rolls his eyes and changes his answers. “But Dele won the next three.”

“So who was the overall champion?” Dele presses.

“You were, Dele. You are the champion,” Eric says cooly. He looks past Dele and suddenly laughs out loud, pointing across the room.

Dele turns and moves the camera back to Kyle and John just in time to see Kyle lifting John over his shoulder. John screams and slaps Kyle’s lower back, pleading with him to be put down.

Kyle drops John to his feet and tries to make up for it by fussing over him and brushing him down, but John simply huffs and walks away, grabbing the red jacket that had been discarded on the end of Eric’s bed. He puts it on and zips it up defiantly.

“The lovebirds are at it again,” Eric comments. Dele looks over his shoulder at him and nods in agreement.

“Stop filming me, you’re as bad as Jesse,” John whines at Dele. He sits back in the seat that he’s pulled up in front of the bed and starts scrolling through his phone, pouting and furrowing his brow. Nobody does a bitch face quite like John Stones.

“I’m not as bad as Jesse,” Dele argues, because Jesse records absolutely _everything_. There’s no one that hates it more than Marcus Rashford, who tends to be 90% of the footage.

“You’re pretty bad,” Eric says under his breath. “You filmed me eating Cheerios for three minutes straight once.”

Dele chooses to ignore Eric’s unnecessary comment and instead hooks up his phone to the bluetooth speaker he’s brought with him to France. Eric nudges him with his foot again, but Dele is too distracted trying to figure out why the connection is failing to actually pay Eric the attention he wants right now.

Eric sighs and climbs off the bed, taking up residence instead in the chair between John and the desk. He leans back and gestures towards the pack of Uno cards on the TV cabinet. “Another game?” Eric asks, but before John can answer, Dele gets the bluetooth working and immediately starts blasting _My Boo_ by Ghost Town DJ.

“Running man challenge!” Dele exclaims loudly.

He fast forwards the song to 45 seconds in, to the part where they sing _at night, I think of you, I want to be your lady baby._ As soon as the line kicks in, Dele holds his phone up to record while John and Eric jump into action, attempting to recreate the running man challenge by dancing on the spot. They look completely stupid and Eric really _cannot_ do the dance, but he gives it a good go and he grins the whole time like he thinks he’s actually really good at this.

Dele records the whole thing and immediately adds it to his story with a laughing crying face emoji. He watches it back eight times before Eric finally walks over and makes a grab for the phone.

“ _I want, to be your laaaaady, baby!”_ John sings, way off-key. He gestures for Kyle to come and sit next to him in the now empty seat and Kyle obliges.  

“Dele, stop it,” Eric sighs when Dele plays the video back another two times, holding the phone out of Eric’s reach. “We don’t need to hear it one hundred times, Del.”

“It’s funny!” Dele pouts, but he clicks off the story and goes back onto his Spotify account instead.

“Oi, Del, put that Cake by the Ocean song on,” John says suddenly, pointing at Dele’s phone.

Dele glares at him across the room. Who does he think he is, just demanding songs without so much as a please?

“No. I’m the DJ. Don’t tell me what to play,” Dele says petulantly.  

“Don’t fight, boys,” Kyle warns. “We’ve got a game the day after tomorrow.”

“Play the song,” John whines. Dele shakes his head at him because no, he’s not going to play the song. Not if John isn’t going to ask nicely.

Instead, he plays _Don’t_ by Bryson Tiller. It’s Eric’s favourite song at the minute and Dele likes to watch him sing along to it, even if he does get a few of the lines wrong.

“Good choice, Delboy,” Eric says. He sits down on the edge of Dele’s bed and starts humming along under his breath. He doesn’t properly commit to it, though, and Dele has to dig his toe into Eric’s ribs to get his attention.

“Why aren’t you singing it?” Dele asks, only audible enough for Eric to hear. They’ve got the music playing quite loud and John and Kyle have started doing over-dramatic impressions of Jordan Henderson.

“I can’t sing,” Eric answers.

Dele gives him a questioning look. “You sing in front of me all the time.”

“You’re different,” Eric says quickly, shrugging it off and turning to laugh at John’s horrendous impression of a Liverpool accent.

Dele looks to John and Kyle and then back to Eric. Sure, he and Eric spend more time together than Kyle and Eric, and definitely more than John and Eric, but he doesn’t quite know how he’s _different_. They’re all friends, so why is Eric so comfortable singing horribly in front of Dele but he’s not comfortable rapping a few lines in front of Kyle and John?

“How am I different?” Dele questions.  

“Hey Eric, who’s this?” Kyle suddenly shouts, drawing Eric’s attention away. He does his best impression of Kieran Trippier getting defensive about being nutmegged and Eric guesses it straight away.

“How am I different?” Dele asks again, pushing Eric’s hip with his foot. Eric glances at him to see what he wants but then Kyle is doing another impression, this time of Jesse Lingard.

Finally, after another three impressions, Eric turns back to Dele. “What did you say?” He asks apologetically. Dele rolls his eyes in response.

“Doesn’t matter.”  

They listen to a few more Bryson Tiller songs, then a few from Justin Bieber, and finally the _Cake by the Ocean_ song that John insists is an absolute tune. Dele won’t admit it in front of him, obviously, but it is actually a funky song.

After a few more songs and one more game of Uno, John begins to yawn and lose concentration.

“It’s gone midnight, we should probably go to bed,” he comments. He stands up and stretches his arms into the air above his head, yawning widely. “C’mon, Walks.”

Kyle sighs but gets up without too much complaint. “You tired, John?” He asks when John yawns for a third time in quick succession. John nods and rubs his eyes. “Let’s get you in bed then. Big day of training tomorrow!”

John and Kyle collect their belongings, bid a quick good night to Dele and Eric, and head out back to their own room. While Eric is seeing them out, Dele opens his Snapchat story again to watch Eric and John’s running man video.

“You watching that video again?” Eric asks as he throws himself down onto the bed next to Dele with a groan. Dele actually bounces a little at the impact and rolls over to shove Eric in retaliation. At least, that’s what he intends, but as he rolls over, he finds Eric lying next to him, holding the shell up above his face. The one Dele picked up and gave to him on the beach, the one he told him to keep forever. Eric turns it over in his fingers, idly rubbing the smooth underside. Dele pauses and lets his hand fall to the bed instead.  

“Yeah, it’s funny. You both look so lame. You’re...” Dele begins, but he loses his sentence mid-way through, mesmerised by the way Eric is turning the shell over in hand, rolling it between his fingers without dropping it. “Cute, though,” he adds as an afterthought.  

“I doubt that,” Eric laughs. He slips the shell back in his pocket and sits up. “So, is this my bed or yours?”

Dele feels a blush creeping up the back of his neck. He doesn’t know why the bed situation has even become a big deal. It’s really not an issue if they switch beds, and it’s not even an issue if they share a bed, so why is Dele massively overthinking this question and why does Eric have to keep asking it?

“Dunno,” Dele shrugs. “I guess this one is yours, technically.”

Eric smoothes out the duvet beneath his hand, his gaze set on the bed and not on Dele. “Well, which one are you sleeping in?” He asks, his voice small.

“I’m comfy,” Dele says, not really answering the question. He’s not even in the bed, he’s just on it, but he’s warmed it up now and he’s sort of come to think of this as his bed. It’s where he slept last night, after all. The other bed is cold and seems annoyingly far away. Plus it’s beneath the creaky A/C. And, like he said, he’s comfy here. He doesn’t want to have to get up. “Might stay here.”

“Right,” Eric says. He sounds a little bit put out. “Guess I’ll take the other bed, then.”

Dele is still lying next to him on his side, facing Eric, and he notices a small piece of loose thread hanging off the hem of Eric’s white t-shirt. Without thinking, Dele reaches out and pulls it, snapping it off for him. He shows Eric the loose thread in his hand and then bunches it up and throws it vaguely at the direction of the bin.

“Thanks,” Eric mutters. He pulls his knees up to his chest and hugs them, his eyes now trained on Dele.

“What?” Dele asks, narrowing his gaze in suspicion. Eric continues looking at him and simply shrugs, laughing at Dele’s reaction.

“Nothing. Just happy to be here,” Eric answers easily.

Dele’s expression softens and he lifts his hand to Eric’s head to pat his hair like a dog. Eric ever so slightly leans into the touch and Dele smiles warmly. “You are cute sometimes, you know that, Diet?” He says teasingly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Eric replies, rolling his eyes. He swats Dele’s hand away and gets off the bed. “We need a good night’s sleep, Del. Only one more day of training before the first game.”

“I’m ready right now,” Dele answers confidently. “Don’t need no training.”

Eric laughs but doesn’t reply. Dele sits up and watches him peel back the duvet on the other bed. He wants to tell him to stop being stupid, to just share the bed with Dele, the one that’s warm and isn’t beneath the creaky A/C. But then he realises he’s being ridiculous, anyway. Dele likes his personal space and Eric snores sometimes, which can be quite annoying. So there’s really no point in them sharing the same bed.

“Goodnight, Eric,” Dele murmurs. He clambers beneath the duvet of his own bed, or of Eric’s bed, and slaps the lights witch with a little more force than necessary, even though he didn’t check with Eric first that he was ready to turn the lights out. He has no reason to be annoyed, and yet he can feel himself becoming increasingly irritated. With an audible huff, Dele turns away from Eric to face the door instead and pulls the spare pillows tight against his chest.

\--

The sun once again beats down heavy on the training pitch. The air is hazy with heat and the sky is clear, leaving everyone exhausted and slowly sizzling away in the boxes.

Dele is in the middle of a game of rondo with Jesse Lingard by by his side. They’re encircled by Eric, John, Kyle, Marcus, Raheem, Vardy, Henderson, and Harry Kane. Roy and the coaches are on the outside watching in, waiting for Dele and Jesse to coordinate the perfect counter-attack.

It happens when Henderson lingers a second too long with the ball. He glances at Marcus but then changes his mind in the last moment and angles his kick towards Eric. Dele can see his thought process, can see his foot changing direction, and in that split second, Dele can calculate the right time to leap forward between Jordan and Eric, effectively stopping the ball in its tracks.

Everyone cheers as Jordan buries his face in his hands out of shame. Dele gives him a sympathetic pat on the back and pushes him into the middle of the circle, taking his place on the outside.

“Nice interception,” Eric comments without turning to look at Dele. Dele glances at him and can’t stop the smile spreading across his face.

He trains his eye back on the ball, waits for it to come to him and then swiftly passes it across the circle to Harry. Harry kicks it right back at him and Dele swipes it to his right, to Eric. Eric passes it forward to Marcus and the ball rolls straight through Jordan’s legs.

Once again the circle erupts in jeers at Jordan’s misfortune. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head at Eric, drawing a laugh out of everyone.  

“Nice nutmeg,” Dele comments without turning to look at Eric. He’s still smiling, though, and in the corner of his eye he can see that Eric is too.

\--

“Vardy, tell him!” Marcus exclaims loudly at the dinner table. “He’s trying to eat my food!”

“You don’t even like carrots!” Jesse argues, fighting to get at the food on Marcus’ plate.

Jamie looks up from his dinner and makes a face at Marcus to indicate that he really couldn’t care less and wants no involvement at all in the situation.

“Jesse, there are more carrots if you just go up,” Harry points out calmly, nodding to the canteen where the staff are putting out more food for the England team and their coaches.

“He’s too lazy to go up, that’s why he’s trying to steal mine,” Marcus sighs. He pulls his plate away from Jesse and nudges him. “Go get your _own_ carrots.”

“Oh my _god,_ Beans, you don’t even like them. Why you now acting like you do? You’ve never liked carrots!”

“I’ve always liked them!”

“Since _when_?” Jesse questions dramatically. He flashes a menacing glare at Marcus, but everyone knows they’re both about three seconds away from cracking up.

“Since like, the day I was born.”

“Right, so you were eating carrots when you were two hours old yeah?”

“Yeah,” Marcus agrees. And it’s at this point that he finally breaks out into a broad grin and Jesse shoves him in his chest, also cracking up with laughter.

Eric turns to Dele and sighs in exasperation.

Dele can’t help but laugh a little. This was supposed to be a civilised dinner in the fancy five-star hotel restaurant, but it’s somehow turned into feeding time at the zoo. All of the players are clumped together around one long table and all the coaches around another. Jesse can’t stop stealing everyones food, John has only finished half his dinner and is now getting a telling off from Kyle and Raheem, and Jordan has eaten the last of the roast potatoes. This has especially pissed off Adam Lallana, who insists that Jordan only ate them all to annoy him.

Eric shakes his head at the ongoing scenes and glances down at his and Dele’s empty plates. “Shall we go?” He asks almost pleadingly.

Dele smiles sympathetically at him because he knows full well Eric has wanted to leave for well over half an hour. He’s been staring off into the distance and now he’s getting grumpy about the petty arguments and childish demands for more carrots. Tired Eric is back, and tired Eric wants to go to bed.

“Yeah, okay,” Dele answers. He pushes his plate away from him and stands up, brushing the crumbs from his sweater and joggers.

Eric stares at Dele’s grey sweatshirt for a moment and then pulls on the hem. “Is this mine?” He asks.

“Yeah, you gave it to me,” Dele reminds him. “At your house, when you were packing.”

“I don’t remember. Were you there when I was packing?” Eric asks, confusion clouding his expression. Dele tries his hardest not to be offended by the fact that Eric went a whole day without noticing Dele’s presence, but it’s a little insulting.

“I was there all day, Eric,” Dele says a little sharply.

“Well, you’re there most days,” Eric points out. He beckons towards the restaurant doors. “Shall we go see what’s outside?”

“Where are you two sneaking off to?” Harry asks across the table.

“Off to play on the swings,” Dele answers with a childish grin. He doesn’t know if there is actually a swing set outside, but now that he’s said it, he sort of hopes there is.

“Hey, Eric, chess tournament tonight,” Lallana calls out to Eric. “I need you on my team.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Eric replies, waving him off. “I’m tired.”

“You’re 22,” Lallana says incredulously. “And it’s barely 8pm.”

“He’s 22 going on 50,” Dele remarks, earning a quick, unimpressed glance from Eric.

“Alright, sleep tight, boys,” Harry says. “See you bright and early.”

Dele tugs on Eric’s sleeve to stop him getting caught up in a chess conversation and leads him out of the restaurant.

They wander the empty corridors of the hotel for a while, peering into conference rooms and daring each other to push open doors that say ‘private’.

Behind the main lounge, they come across the door to the basement. It’s locked, but Dele attempts to get inside by guessing the code. After three failed attempts, the lock beeps and they both panic, thinking they’ve set off some sort of alarm. Dele runs off down the corridor and Eric follows him until they reach the back of the hotel and the safety of the gardens.  

It turns out the hotel doesn’t actually have a swing set, much to Dele’s disappointment, but it does have a pool and a gorgeous view of the city over the hills.

They creep outside through a fire door and Dele stalks around the edge of the pool, staring into the calm, ebbing water. He’s almost tempted to jump in, but then he remembers he’s wearing £800 trainers and a £250 t-shirt, plus Eric’s sweatshirt, which probably didn’t cost that much but which Dele still doesn’t want to ruin.

So he doesn’t jump in, but he does stare at his reflection in the water for a while, watching the shape of his silhouette bend in the soft waves.  

Eric hangs back on the decking and looks up into the sky, bundled in his red England jacket and black joggers again. Dele glances at him and smiles broadly.

“Is that Andromedele?” He calls out, nodding towards the star Eric appears to be staring at.

“Yep, there it is, the brightest and most beautiful star in the sky!” Eric replies without missing a beat.

Dele feels instantly giddy at the compliment. It’s rare that Eric says something nice about Dele without a level of sarcasm to it, and if he does, he usually follows it up with some kind of neutralising remark to ensure Dele doesn’t let it go to his head.

But tonight he doesn’t follow it up. He just smiles at Dele and then cranes his neck to look back up at the star.

Dele captures the scene in his head and tries to store every little detail. He wants to remember this a year from now, even ten years from now. Him and Eric, standing in the vacant hotel gardens in Marseille, staring up at the stars. He wants to remember the shape of his silhouette in the pool. He wants to remember Eric’s red jacket. He wants to remember the compliment and the smell of freshly cut grass and the sound of crickets in the bushes.

“Come on, Dele,” Eric calls out, finally turning back to the hotel. “Let’s go to bed.”

Dele takes one last look at the star before skipping after him.

\--

Dele crashes on his bed and flicks through random channels on the TV, but it’s all in French and he only knows like, five French words at most, so he quickly loses interest and instead turns his attention to Eric.

“What are you doing?” Dele asks. Eric is sitting on the bed closest to the window, leaning against the headboard with one arm tucked behind his head. He’s scrolling through his phone and seems to be reading something intently. “Eric?”

Eric turns his gaze to Dele, his mouth parted and his eyes a little glazed over. “Huh?”

“What are you doing?” Dele repeats. He climbs off of his bed and throws himself down next to Eric, peering at his phone. He’s reading an article about how England are expected to crash and burn at the Euros under Roy Hodgson. “Stop reading this shit,” Dele demands. He takes Eric’s phone out of his hands and closes the browser.

“Hey!” Eric exclaims, reaching for his phone.

Dele puts it back in his hand but keeps hold of it for a moment. “Stop reading this,” he says firmly. “You let this get to you. It’s stupid.”

“I’m just interested in what people think of us.”

“Yeah, and it’s stupid. Why would you care what people think of us?”

“Because we represent our country. Our reputation is important if the country are going to be behind us. It’s a bit more important than playing for your club, I think. I just want to know what the country thinks.”

“We haven’t even played any games yet. Don’t get that stuff in your head before we’ve even played a match. It’s just going to wear your down,” Dele concludes.

Eric exhales slowly and leans his head back, deep in thought. He’s always been like this, has always cared a little too much about what people think of him. Dele hates it. He wishes Eric would just ignore it like the rest of them do.

“Hey,” Dele says brightly, hoping to distract Eric from his moody episode. He quickly clambers off the bed to fetch the pack of cards from the tv cabinet. “Teach me how to play that card game again, the one we played on the plane.”

“Eights?”

Dele sits back on the bed in front of Eric, crossing his legs beneath him. “Yeah, Eights.” Dele smiles and hands Eric the pack of cards to shuffle. He’s much better at it than Dele is. “The winner gets window seat on the bus tomorrow.”

Eric’s sullen expression relaxes and he lifts his eyes to meet Dele’s. There’s a moment where Dele thinks Eric might tell him he’s too tired, or that he just wants to sleep. But he doesn’t. He curls his mouth into a small smile and holds his hands out for the cards.

They play four games and Eric wins three of them. Dele puts it down to being distracted, as he isn’t really paying _that_ much attention to the game and he keeps forgetting the rules. Instead, he’s thinking about what Eric just said, about their reputation being more important for country than it is for club. He supposes he has a point. Playing for Spurs is a job - a job he loves, but still a job - but playing for England is an honour. It’s something every young English footballer dreams of doing. Dele was dreaming of it right from the first time he kicked a ball around. He’s never once questioned if he belongs in the England team or if the country is behind him. But it’s different for Eric, because Eric was brought up in Portugal, and for a while he thought he might play for the Portuguese team instead of the English team.

Dele realises that Eric might need just a little more reassurance than the rest of them that he belongs here.

“I’m glad you play for England,” Dele says out loud half way through a game.

Eric has been sitting pensively, staring at his cards and trying to decipher Dele’s next move, but when Dele blurts this out, he drops his poker face and studies Dele for a moment, as if trying to work out the context of the comment.

“I’m just glad you’re here, with us. I’m glad you came to England,” Dele adds without looking up from his cards.

The sentiment is spilling out of him before he can stop it. He knows he sounds soppy, he _knows,_ but the thought of Eric not being here, not playing by his side in every match, not being there to compliment his interceptions in training… that’s a little too much to bear. So yeah, he’ll be sentimental, _just this once_.

“This is where you belong,” Dele concludes. “Oh, and I’ve got two eights, so you’re out.”


	4. Chapter 4

Dele knew he was going to be nervous for the first match, but he didn’t know he was going to be  _ this  _ nervous. He’s pacing up and down the dressing room of Stade Vélodrome, reciting his pre-match rituals while everyone bustles excitedly around him.  _ Left hamstring taped, right knee taped, left boot on, right boot on, left laces tied, right laces tied.  _ Dele runs his hands through his hair and closes his eyes. It’s all good, it’s all fine. Harry keeps telling him so. Except, it’s not all fine, because Eric is missing. 

The game starts in 15 minutes and Eric is  _ missing.  _

Jesse and Marcus are singing so loudly to Kanye West’s  _ Power  _ that Dele can’t hear himself think. The music is too loud, the dressing room too full and chaotic. 

Everyone has just come in from warming up, ready to strip out of their training gear and pull on the match kit. Dele had walked in from the pitch with Harry and Kyle. He was so sure Eric was just a step behind him, walking in with Joe Hart. He was sure Eric was somewhere to his left in the dressing room, taping his own hamstring with Dele’s kinesiology tape. He was sure he could hear Eric’s voice just above the music, asking Jesse to just  _ cool it. _

But now that Dele is looking around for him, Eric is... nowhere. Nobody knows where he is and nobody seems to care that much that he’s missing. Only Harry is bothering to offer some semblance of support. 

“I’m sure he’s just changing his kit or something. Maybe he wants an undershirt?” Harry suggests. He’s standing next to Dele, one foot up on the bench as he leans down to tie the laces on his blue Nike boots.

“This is Eric we’re talking about,” Dele says, getting more flustered by the second. He scratches the back of his head and sighs down at Harry in frustration. “He’s never worn an undershirt in his life.”

“He won’t have gone far, Dele. We still have fifteen minutes.” 

“He checks his kit and his boots in advance. He’s almost as superstitious as me. There’s no way he’s changing his kit fifteen minutes before a game,” Dele points out a little too sternly. He scans the room again, glaring at Jesse and Marcus for turning up the music even though it already feels like a rave in here. “What if he’s got sick or something?” He says, turning back to Harry and worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. 

“He seemed fine earlier,” Harry says. He shoots Dele an apologetic smile and then stands up straight and places his hand reassuringly on Dele’s shoulder. “He’ll be back in a few minutes. Relax.” 

Dele nods and swallows down his nerves. His jaw hurts and he can feel himself grinding his teeth like he used to when he was stressed as a teenager. He sits on the bench and nervously drums his fingers against the wood beneath his knees.  _ Where are you?  _ He thinks.

Eric has never done this before. You’re not supposed to leave the dressing room without good reason, and certainly not without telling the manager. It’s not only frowned upon, but it’s also just rude, right? To walk off from your best friend without telling them where you’re going.

Dele feels like he wants to throw up. He doesn’t want to play this game without Eric. It’s their  _ first  _ game in the Euros together. 

Dele combs his fingers through his hair and checks his tape again. His unties and reties his boots. He walks around the room and tries to sound as calm as possible when he interrupts conversations to ask if they’ve seen a blonde defensive midfielder anywhere.

But nobody has. 

Why,  _ why  _ would Eric just wander off without telling anyone? There are now nine minutes left to go and Eric is the only one not here. Dele has checked the bathroom, the showers, even the sports therapy offices. They’re all empty. None of the coaches know where he is, either.

_ Medical!  _ Dele thinks to himself suddenly. Maybe Eric hurt himself in the warm up and he’s gone to be looked over. It’s the only place left Dele hasn’t checked, so he sneaks out of the dressing room and wanders down the corridor alone until he finds the medical assessment rooms. He peers through the windows and feels the frustration growing in his chest. The lights are off, nobody is inside. 

_ Where the hell are you? _

Dele angrily follows the booming music back to the dressing room. He walks through the doors and pushes past John and Ross, who are in an animated conversation with the coaches.

It’s as Dele is pacing back to the bench that he suddenly stops dead in his tracks. 

Eric is right there. He’s at the bench, chatting casually with Harry Kane. He’s dressed, ready to go, and it doesn’t look like there’s a thing in the world wrong with him.

Dele storms up to him and shoves him into the wall a little harder than intended. 

Eric almost chokes on the words in his mouth. He looks at Dele, eyes wide and confused, and Harry laughs nervously in the background.

“Where the hell have you been?” Dele demands furiously. He continues shooting daggers at Eric, who gives him an amused yet somewhat affronted stare and makes a point of rubbing the shoulder where it came into contact with the wall. He opens his mouth to say something but Dele interrupts him. “I’ve been worried sick, Diet!”

Eric chuckles and points down to his boots. “I changed my laces.” 

“Why didn’t you do that here?”

“Forgot my spares,” Eric answers carefully. 

Harry raises his eyebrows and ducks out of the conversation, leaving Eric to deal with Dele alone. 

“I thought you… I don’t know. I thought you’d left or something,” Dele says, deflating. He feels stupid now for how much he overreacted. Eric was just changing his laces.  _ Of course  _ he was fine,  _ of course  _ he wasn’t actually missing, and  _ of course  _ he was going to come back in time. 

Dele sighs at his own stupidity and gestures guiltily towards Eric’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to push you that hard.” 

Eric wraps his arm around Dele’s shoulders and pulls him against his side for a quick hug. “You really think I’d leave you in midfield alone?”

Dele breathes in Eric’s familiar scent and feels the tension leaving his shoulders with every passing second. 

“Are you sure your shoulder is okay?” Dele asks tentatively. He pulls away from Eric slightly to assess the damage, lifting the shirt away from Eric’s upper arm. 

“I’m fine, Del,” Eric laughs. He ruffles Dele’s hair and Dele doesn’t even complain this time. He smiles up at Eric sheepishly. 

“Will those laces help you score?” Dele asks. He looks down at Eric’s orange Nike boots again. He’s always worn white laces but today they’re red.

Eric looks down at the boots too, and then his lifts his gaze to meet Dele’s. “I hope so,” he smiles.

\--

The stadium comes alive the moment the England squad walk out onto the pitch, ready to take on Russia for their first match of the Euros 2016 group stage.  

Dele feels his heart pound behind his ribcage as he looks up into the crowd and tries to take it all in. The sun is beaming down on them and the fans are already chanting their songs, rattling the stands with thundering roars. This is Dele’s first major international tournament and finally, as he walks out onto the pitch with the team he loves and trusts, he feels  _ ready.  _

The match gets underway quickly and before Dele knows it, the stadium and the fans and the chants have faded away, reduced to just a blur in his peripheral vision. All he can focus on right now is the game; where the ball is, where his marker is, and where the next pass needs to be.

It’s 45 minutes of frustration for both teams. Russia press hard but England’s defence is ready for it. They collect the ball and send it back to the attacking half, where Dele, Harry, and Lallana eagerly await any opportunity to push forward. 

But their attempts are blocked or saved. Both teams are here to win but neither side manages to convert their efforts into a tangible goal.

When the whistle goes at half time, Dele is relieved. He’s completely exhausted and needs to sit down for fifteen minutes. He holds his hand above his eyes to block out the sun, finds Eric across the pitch, and smiles at him. Eric raises a hand and nods, shooting the same tired yet optimistic smile back at him. It’s 0-0, but Dele feels like a goal is close on the horizon as long as they just keep pushing. 

In the dressing room, the team are given bottles of water and ushered to the bench for a rest. Roy talks at them for ten minutes about new tactics and a slight change in defensive formation. Danny Rose and Kyle Walker are to stay further down the wing, allowing Eric, Dele, and Wayne to go forward with more aggression.

“Ready to get back out?” Eric asks, slapping Dele’s knee in the final few minutes of the half time break. Dele makes a face at him and uses his teeth to pull open the cap on his water bottle.

“Always ready,” Dele mumbles around the mouth of his drink. He swigs the water and then sets it down on the floor next to his trainers. “You ready to score some goals with your magic laces?” 

Eric winks at him and clicks his tongue. As they stand up, Eric’s hand finds Dele’s lower back, gently ushering him forwards towards the door. “Just you wait and see, Delboy.”

\--

It happens in the 73rd minute, when England are given a free kick just outside the box. 

There’s a short burst of deliberation between Harry and Eric about who will take the free kick. Dele is walking back into the box so he doesn’t know who will actually take it, but he keeps looking back in anticipation.  

When the whistle goes, it’s Harry who starts a misleading run up to the ball. 

But it’s Eric who flies in behind him, it’s Eric who puts power behind the ball, it’s Eric who creates the perfect arc over the heads of the Russian defenders, and it’s Eric who puts the ball in to the top left corner of the net.

Eric has scored. Dele can barely even process the fact that  _ Eric has scored  _ until suddenly his whole team are running towards the corner flag and Dele finds himself running with them. 

Eric goes down on his knees at the flag and somehow it’s Dele who reaches him first. Against the roar of the crowd, Dele smashes into the back of Eric, propelling them both forwards. Eric finds his balance in the last second and pulls himself, and Dele, to their feet. Dele is beaming proudly into the cheering faces of the fans, and then suddenly he’s being pulled back by Eric’s hand on his shoulder. 

The rest of the team huddle around Eric, scrubbing his hair and wrapping their arms around his shoulders. Dele gets pulled into the crowd, pressed against Eric, and finally they make eye contact. They grin at each other and Dele shakes off the arms holding him back, possessively peels away the hands that are still on Eric, and reaches forward to take hold of Eric’s face. 

_ I could kiss you!  _ Dele thinks,  _ I could actually kiss you!  _

And he almost does. For a split second, Dele can’t think of anything else other than kissing Eric Dier. Beautiful Eric, with his wide, shit-eating grin and his magic laces that just scored the first England goal of the Euros 2016. Dele wants nothing more than to kiss him. 

But then the team melt away and the stadium fades back into view and suddenly Dele remembers that there is more to the world than just Eric Dier. 

“Eric,  _ Eric _ !” Dele enthuses. It’s the only word he can muster in all of his excitement. He leans his head against Eric’s and pulls him closer, his heart still pounding beneath his rib cage.

Eric hugs him tightly and buries his face in the cook of Dele’s neck. Even through the sudden spike of adrenaline rushing through his body, Dele can still feel Eric smiling against his skin. It sends him into overdrive and the next thing he knows, he’s turning his head against Eric’s and he’s kissing Eric’s face. His cheeks, his nose, even the corner of his mouth. Dele plants small kisses all over him, not really processing what he’s doing until Eric laughs and shakes him off, giving his shoulder an affectionate squeeze. 

“Sorry,” Dele says breathlessly. He feels himself going red but Eric grins and ruffles his hair. 

Before they can talk any more about it, the team are forced back into their positions. There are still 17 minutes left to play and now Russia have nothing to lose. 

Dele knows how important it is to stay 100% focused in the last twenty minutes of the game, but all he can think about how how incredible that free kick was, how he can’t wait to get off the pitch to celebrate, and how much he loves Eric Dier. 

_ That’s my best friend,  _ Dele thinks, staring intently at Eric as he walks away back into his central defensive position.  _ That’s my best friend who just did that.  _

When the game goes back into play, Dele is forced to shake those thoughts from his head. They’re going to have to be more defensive now, so Dele quickly catches Eric’s attention and nods at him, signaling that they need to drop back. Eric understands immediately and they adjust their formation to accomodate a 1-0 lead. 

It works. Dele and Eric fall back in order to help strengthen the defence, and the Russian team simply cannot break through it, though they try time and time again. 

The clock ticks over to 90 minutes and Dele pauses for a moment, catching his breath while the ball is out of play.  _ Four added minutes.  _

They’ve defended for 90 minutes, so Dele tells himself they can handle another four. Just four more minutes and then they can all celebrate their first big win of the tournament.

The first minute passes with ease. Dele, Eric, and Harry hold possession in the midfield, occasionally playing forward to Lallana. But then there’s a slip up in a pass between Wilshire and Smalling. The opposition take possession and suddenly they’re on an aggressive counter-attack. Danny Rose tries and fails to hold them back, and then out of nowhere, the ball rockets past Joe Hart and into the back of the net. 

Dele feels like he’s been winded. He stops on the pitch and tries to keep a hold of his emotions as best he can, but there are  _ two  _ minutes left and it feels like Vasili Berezutski has just stolen Eric’s goal completely. Their victory, which was down to Eric, has just become void. Dele wants to cry and scream and fight, but he can’t, because there are still two minutes left and Berezutski has just shown what can happen in the space of two minutes.

The seconds tick down quickly. Dele sprints with what little energy he has left in him, tackles a Russian midfielder, wins the ball, and passes it through to Lallana who is waiting with Kane by his side. Lallana gets it to Harry and Harry makes a run for the box, but he’s instantly charged on by three defenders who don’t plan to let Harry get any closer. They slip the ball from his feet and kick it back down to the other end of the pitch. 

The moment the ball hits the ground, the referee blows his whistle and brings the game to an end.

Dele stares at the screen that sits high at the end of the pitch. England 1-1 Russia.  _ It wasn’t supposed to end this way,  _ he thinks.  _ This was Eric’s game.  _

He tells himself that there’s still cause for celebration. Russia was always going to be their most difficult match of the group, so to come out with a draw isn’t the end of the world. It would have been sweeter to start the tournament with a win, but Eric’s goal is still what everyone will remember from the game.

\--

In the dressing room, it takes all of about five seconds for Dele to locate Eric and jump on his back. Eric stumbles for a second but then straightens up, hoisting Dele into a more comfortable position. He holds Dele’s thighs against his sides and presses his thumbs into the muscle.

“Diet gets the goaaal!” Dele says gleefully, grinning against the side of Eric’s face.

Eric rubs his thumb against the skin on Dele’s thigh and smiles up at him. “Lucky free kick.” 

Dele rolls his eyes because, as always, Eric still can’t just accept a compliment when he’s given one. He wants to argue that it wasn’t down to luck at all, but the dressing room has filled up and everyone wants to come and congratulate England’s first goal scorer, so Eric is quickly distracted by an influx of teammates. 

While he waits for Eric’s full attention, Dele pushes himself up against Eric’s hips and rests his chin on the top of Eric’s head. His hair is soft and smells like the fruity shampoo he’s been using. It smells really good, maybe even better than Dele’s shampoo.  

“Great goal, Dier,” Harry enthuses next to them. “You can take all the free kicks from now on!”

Eric grins and shifts his hands higher up Dele’s thighs, keeping him in place. Dele responds by squeezing his legs around Eric’s waist.  _ I’m not going anywhere,  _ he thinks, and while the rest of the team eventually come over to congratulate Eric on his goal, Dele stays on Eric’s back and tries to ignore the fact that Eric is occasionally and very subtly stroking the skin on Dele’s thighs.

After a few minutes when everyone has gone back to their respective spot on the bench or headed for the showers, Eric loosens his grip and eases Dele to the ground. Dele finds his footing and waits for Eric to turn around to face him.

“You were right about the laces,” Dele says softly.

“Worth losing me for ten minutes, then?” Eric asks with an amused smile. 

“I guess,” Dele replies. He lightly shoves Eric in the chest and Eric looks like he’s about to say something, but then Tom Heaton comes over and pulls Eric away into another congratulatory conversation.

Dele grabs his towel and begins to peel off his kit until he’s down to just his boxers and sliders. When he turns around, Tom and Eric have wandered across the room to talk to Jesse and Marcus. Dele looks over at them and Eric seems to sense his gaze, because he immediately looks over his shoulder back at Dele. They share a quick smile before Dele ducks his head and Eric turns back to his conversation. 

Dele picks up his towel and wash bag from the bench and as he does so, he spots Eric’s boots on the floor next to his own. He stares at the red laces and smiles to himself. 

The goal wasn’t down to the laces. It was all Eric. 

\--

It’s a thirty minute ride from Stade Vélodrome back to the hotel. 

The tables at the back of the bus are always the loudest, and as usual are occupied by Jesse, Marcus, Raheem, John, and Kyle. They already have Drake blasting by the time Dele and Eric board the bus and John holds up a hand to them, signalling to the empty seats with an inviting grin.

Dele catches John’s eye and shakes his head politely. He’s not in the mood for Uno or Drake or whatever loud film they’ve got playing on the TVs. He’s tired from the match and he needs to just sit down quietly for half an hour.

“Boring!” John heckles down the bus. Dele tilts his head and sticks his middle finger up at him, but he follows it up with a wink when John pretends to look offended.

Dele doesn’t have much time to linger on John’s invitation though, because suddenly Eric is pulling on his arm and guiding him into a two-seat row. Eric takes the window seat and immediately turns off the screen in front of him. “You don’t want to watch this, right?”

_ White House Down  _ is actually one of Dele’s favourite action movies, and one that he usually wouldn’t mind watching, but he knows Eric doesn’t do movies on the bus, so he quickly shakes his head and pretends he has no interest in it.

Dele settles into his seat and kicks his feet out in front of him. It’s a bright, sunny, yet lethargic afternoon and Dele thinks he might need to have a nap when they get back to the hotel if he’s going to be refreshed for the evening celebrations.

“You want to listen?” Eric says, offering Dele one half of his earphones. Dele nods, takes it, and pops it in his right ear. 

They listen to Bryson Tiller while Dele plays on his phone and Eric rests his head against the window, his eyes slipping shut every few minutes. Dele glances at him every now and then, smiling to himself. Eric is exhausted and he keeps frowning because the bumps in the road are jostling him awake.

“Why don’t you lay on me?” Dele ask quietly, but Eric doesn’t hear him. He shakes Eric’s arm and waits until Eric blinks himself awake. “Lay on me,” he says again. 

Eric shuffles in his seat so that he can lean against Dele instead of the window. His head falls heavy onto Dele’s shoulder and he turns his body inwards, his right arm falling across his waist and his hand coming to rest just next to Dele’s thigh. 

Dele does his best to stay completely still. He slides his phone into his pocket and rests his head against the back of his seat, looking down into Eric’s blonde hair. There are a few strands out of place and Dele has to fight the urge to run his hands through it.

They lay like this for a while, with Dele doing his best to keep Eric comfortable and Eric drifting back off to sleep. Dele closes his eyes against the sunlight pouring through the window and thinks back to the game and to Eric’s incredible free kick. Eric doesn’t even usually take free kicks, so Dele had been surprised when he turned in the last second and saw the ball flying out from under Eric’s boot. He remembers following the ball through the air as it travelled over the wall and dipped into the top corner of the net. It was perfect in every way. The perfect free kick from the perfect player. 

“Hey,” Dele whispers, talking mostly into Eric’s hair which has warmed in the afternoon sun. He keeps his voice low so that nobody else can hear him. He’s fairly sure Eric is asleep, but he continues anyway. “I’m proud of you for getting that goal, you know. I’m jealous and annoyed that you scored before me, but I’m still proud. All that stuff you were reading online about how England are going to fail and how the team is too inexperienced, you proved them wrong.” Dele pauses when feels a lump growing in his throat. “Nobody can say anything bad about you. There’s nothing bad about you.” 

Eric shifts a little in his sleep and edges his hand closer to Dele’s thigh. His fingers brush the cotton of Dele’s shorts and Dele smiles into Eric’s hair, sniffing it just one more time. 

He closes his eyes against the heat of the afternoon sun and lets himself soak up the calm for a few more minutes. Sleep pulls heavily at him and before he knows it, he’s resting his head on top of Eric’s and dreaming about gentle hands and strawberry shampoo.


	5. Chapter 5

By the time they’ve got back to the hotel, had dinner, and had their thorough post-match debrief with the coaches, Dele feels heavy with exhaustion again.

They’re waiting for the lift in the lobby. Dele is trying to crack the bones in his neck to relieve some of the tension and Eric is scrolling through his phone, probably attending to messages from his family about the game. Dele glances over and sees the name ‘Maria’ at the top of the screen. Eric is tapping away, some long response to what was already a long message. 

“I thought that was over?” Dele comments before he can stop himself. Eric lifts his gaze and looks at Dele for a few seconds before saying anything. 

“What?” 

“Maria,” Dele points out, nodding at the phone in Eric’s hands. He knows he should stop. It’s nothing to do with him, after all. But Eric and Maria? That was supposed to be long over. “You still texting?” 

“This is Maria who manages my apartment block,” Eric says, frowning a little. “She’s asking if she can go into my house to get meter readings.” 

Dele darts his gaze away from Eric and up at the lift instead. He stabs the button a few more times for good measure. “Why is this taking so long?” He sighs. 

When the lift arrives, Dele steps inside and begins to assess his injuries in the mirror. His bones are muscles and joints are aching from the clatterings he took from the Russian team, and from peeling down the pitch over and over. There are bruises and scrapes all over him. Eric is in a similar state, but he’s always been better at licking his wounds. He doesn’t linger over cuts and scrapes the way Dele does, doesn’t pick at scabs or impatiently pull on tight, wound-up muscles. He looks tired, and maybe a little rough around the edges, but his hair is still shiny and the euphoria of his goal is still written all over his face. 

“What are you looking at?” Eric asks when he finally catches Dele staring at him in the mirror’s reflection. He stuffs his phone in his pocket and briefly checks his hair in the mirror.  _ Still shiny, Diet, don’t worry, _ Dele thinks. 

“Hm?” Dele mumbles. He goes back to his own reflection, looks at his dark eyes for a moment. “Just thinking about how much better looking I am than you,” he says.

Eric rolls his eyes and waits for Dele to step out of the lift when the doors creak open. 

They walk down the corridor side by side, past quiet, empty rooms. 

“I know you want to keep the celebrations low key tonight but as soon as we get back to London, I’m taking you out to get pissed,” Dele says.

Eric scratches behind his ear and stares off down the corridor. “Could just get pissed in Portugal,” he replies  nonchalantly. As if this is already planned - their promised trip to Portugal. Dele forces his expression to stay neutral, but he gives Eric a quick nod when Eric glances sideways at him. 

“Yeah, ‘spose so. Is the alcohol like really strong there?”

“Depends what you buy, but I know the good stuff.” Eric winks at him as he fishes the key card out of his wallet.

“So it’s going to be a proper lads holiday?”

“Full of sun, sea, and sex,” Eric adds. He swings the door open and flicks the light switch on. Dele is frozen to the spot outside of their room and Eric is holding the door, waiting for him to step inside.  _ Oh,  _ he tells himself, almost laughing at his own stupidly,  _ he means sex with other people. _

\-- 

The celebrations are kept tame and low-key - mostly because the team are strictly forbidden from drinking alcohol - but Eric seems happy just to have the company. 

Dele has given up moving around the room and entertaining people and has now resigned himself to his bed, where he’s lying stretched out with his phone in his hand and a lollipop stick in his mouth. He’s been chewing it for thirty minutes now, even though Harry keeps telling him how gross and unhygienic it is.

Eric is sitting on the bed by the window, legs bent and arms resting on top of his knees. His expression is glazed over and tired, but he’s making polite conversation with anyone who goes to sit with him. Dele watches him quietly, wondering what he’s thinking about in the moments where he inhales slowly, runs his hand through his hair, and generally just looks like he’s got the weight of the world of his shoulders.  

_ Probably thinking about me,  _ Dele thinks, but then he pushes that thought away. Eric’s always telling him he’s too self-centered and maybe he has a point. 

Dele’s phone buzzes in his hand and he flips it over to read the notification. 

**Look at jesse and marcus**

It’s a text from Eric. Dele glances up and finds Jesse and Marcus by the window, bickering about the right way to shuffle a pack of cards. Marcus is trying to teach Jesse how to ‘do it properly’ but Jesse is insisting that he’s been able to shuffle cards since he was three-years-old. 

Dele listens in on their argument for a moment but doesn’t really get the significance. It’s just your average Jesse-and-Marcus spat. It’ll be drawn out a while and then one of them will laugh and the other will follow suit. Same old, same old. Dele looks at Eric and furrows his eyebrows in confusion.

Eric starts typing something out on his phone.

**Jesse’s hand**

Dele swipes the message away and then looks back at Jesse and Marcus. Marcus is perched on the windowsill with Jesse standing between his legs. Marcus is shuffling cards in the space between him and Jesse, and Jesse is watching him, but his hand is resting on Marcus’ thigh, like maybe he put it there for a moment and then got comfortable and forgot to move it.

Again, Dele still doesn't really see the significance. He throws Eric another questioning glance. 

**You ever think something might be going on? For real?**

Dele stares at the message and feels his throat constrict. He knows Eric is watching him right now, knows Eric can read him like a book. He suddenly feels exposed and vulnerable, and he’s mad at Eric for asking such a stupid question. Like Dele would know. Like Dele would  _ care.  _ Like any of this has anything to do with Dele at all. 

_ erm no lol. not our business anyways _

Dele sends the message and then makes a show of putting his phone on charge, leaving it under the pillow on his bed. No more texts.

Instead, Dele watches the ongoing chess competition in the corner of the room. Kyle and Harry are deep into their first match, with John attempting to offer advice on both sides of the competition. He’s clearly hindering more than he’s helping, but neither Kyle nor Harry want to be the first to dismiss him.

It goes on for a while and Dele eventually loses interest. He looks back at Eric but Eric is still watching Jesse and Marcus. Jesse has moved his hand now, but he’s giggling away between Marcus’ legs, shoving him in the chest and drawing the the grin out of Marcus that he reserves especially for Jesse.  

It’s actually cute to watch, and yes, fine, Dele  _ has  _ wondered if something more is going on between them. But only for a second, because that thought always feels dangerous and completely off limits. They’re not allowed.  _ None of us are,  _ Dele reminds himself. It’s an unspoken rule that everyone adheres to. Maybe Jesse and Marcus less so than others.

Dele looks at Eric again. 

There’s an ache in his chest that’s making him feel off-kilter. He wonders if it’s because he just got mad at Eric for absolutely no reason at all and now Eric looks sad and moody. And he  _ scored  _ today. They should be celebrating and smiling and laughing, but Eric’s face is completely stoic. He looks like he’s thinking too hard, probably mulling over the implications of being gay  _ and  _ a professional footballer. Not that Eric is gay. He isn’t. Dele knows that. But he’s probably thinking about Jesse and Marcus and the very slim possibility that maybe of of them is, or both. He’s probably thinking about how that would work within their club, too. Would it be a breach of ethics? Dele’s pretty sure there’s some anti workplace romance thing. He’s heard it talked about on shows and movies. He wonders if it applies to all workplaces or just offices.  _ Would Poch care?  _ Dele thinks, and then out of nowhere he’s hit with a wave of nausea.  

“What’s got your brain ticking?”

Dele blinks himself out of his train of thought and focuses on John, who is waving in front of his face and holding out his hand filled with peanut M&Ms. Dele takes a few and pops them in his mouth, figures the sugar might help with the nausea.  

“Nothing,” Dele says drly. John makes a face at him and saunters off back to the chess corner. 

When Dele looks over at Eric, Eric is already looking back at him. Dele smiles weakly and Eric lifts his chin a little, gesturing for Dele to come over. Dele pulls himself up from his bed and walks around to Eric’s, throwing himself down like he doesn’t quite care where he lands. Eric moves his arm out of the way just in time.

“Who d’ya thinks gonna win?” Dele asks quietly, nodding to the intense game of chess between Harry and Kyle.

“Adam would win if he was playing,” Eric answers. He chucks his phone onto his bedside table and diverts his attention to Harry and Kyle, narrowing his gaze. “But out of these two, my money’s on Harry.” 

“You’re a better player than both of them,” Dele insists, even though it usually pains him to compliment Eric so openly. “And Lallana.” 

“Occasionally,” Eric smiles.

Dele sits up and positions himself next to Eric so that they’re both leaning with their backs against the headboard. It’s nice, just sitting quietly together, sharing the same space again. They watch the chess, they watch Jesse and Marcus for a while, and they talk to Raheem when he pops in. In the moments when they’re not focusing on somebody else, and when it feels like they’ve disappeared entirely from view, Eric will slowly lean his knee outwards until it brushes Dele’s. Dele doesn’t even know if Eric realises he’s doing it. 

_ So unaware of how much space you take up, Eric Dier. _

“There’s a bakery nearby,” Eric says suddenly. It takes Dele a few seconds to process the sentence. He stares at the area where Eric’s knee is touching his. “We haven’t had croissants yet so I thought we could go get some tomorrow morning.”

Eric’s wearing his grey England hoodie and it’s at least two sizes too big for him. Dele turns his head and looks at it. He doesn’t remember telling Eric he could pack this. It’s baggy and soft and Eric has it zipped all the way up to his chin for some reason. He looks cosy, and warm. Dele wants it. Or maybe just wants to snuggle up to it.

He’s tired.  

“Del?”

He should have napped. 

Eric had woken up grumpy and tired when they got off the bus, so Dele had made a scene of holding his hand and leading him inside. He’d made a show of it, making sure everyone knew it was just a joke.  _ England’s goal scorer coming through!  _ He’d called out to anyone who stumbled into their path.  _ Make way for the goal scorer, please! _

The joke had continued in the lift, in the corridor, and into their room. Dele had peeled back the duvet of his own bed and held out his hand, guiding Eric into it.  _ For you, Sir.  _

Eric had slumped into Dele’s bed without a second thought, and Dele quietly promised to watch over him while he slept. Eric had nodded and laughed, mumbled something, maybe a  _ thanks, Del.  _ It was just a joke, but Dele was committed to it. He’d sat in the corner of the room on his phone, watching over Eric while he slept. Maybe it was his own tiredness setting in, or maybe it was just the come down from the game, but Dele had so badly wanted to climb beneath the duvet and sleep next to him. He’d just looked so calm and cosy, all wrapped up in Dele’s duvet and clutching Dele’s pillow against his chest.

_ Was he wearing this then?  _ Dele wonders, still looking at the grey hoodie.  _ When did he put this on?  _

“Del?”

Dele shakes himself out of his daze. “Huh?” He says, clearing his throat with a short cough. 

“I said do you want to go to the bakery tomorrow? I think it’s about fifteen minute walk from here.” 

Bakery.  _ Is there a bakery? _ Dele doesn’t remember seeing one but he’s also not entirely sure he’d recognise a bakery straight away anyway. And how has Eric already seen it? When has Eric been  _ anywhere _ without Dele by his side?

“Dele?” Eric says again, a little sharper this time. He waves a hand in front of Dele’s face. 

“What? Yeah, yeah, let’s go to the bakery,” Dele smiles. He shuffles closer to Eric and lays his head on Eric’s shoulder, turning his gaze back to the chess match. “Sorry, ’m just tired.” 

Eric presses his knee into Dele’s a little firmer. 

\--

The chess game finishes with, as expected, a Harry Kane victory. Dele figures this is probably the best outcome, as at least Harry isn’t one to brag. Instead, he shakes Kyle’s hand, thanks John for his help, and bids everyone goodnight before collecting his Patriots sweater and heading out back to his own room to sleep. 

Jesse and Marcus aren’t far behind him. They sit on the end of Eric’s bed for a while and they all discuss the game, but then Jesse begins to yawn and Marcus complains that he’s feeling hungry, so they eventually amble out of Eric’s room together in search of a late night snack. 

“We should probably go too, Walks,” John points out. “You need to call your mum, remember.” 

“See, this is why I keep you around. My personal assistant, aren’t ya John?” Kyle begins. He gets up from his chair and walks over to John, who is standing in front of the TV flicking through music channels. “Come on then, big boy.” 

“Don’t call me that,” John mutters, frowning at the nickname. He turns the TV off and throws the remote down on Dele’s bed. “It’s weird.”

Kye ignores the comment and waves goodnight to Dele and Eric. Dele sleepily waves back, still not lifting his head from Eric’s shoulder. He suddenly becomes aware that everyone else has now left, too. He wonders when Jesse and Marcus left, and Raheem.  _ Did I say goodnight to Harry and Jordan? Did Jordan even come over?  _ He doesn’t remember. 

“See you tomorrow,” Eric says. “Thanks for coming over.” 

“Yeah no worries,” John grins. “Thanks for the goal today!”

Eric playfully salutes him with two fingers and bows his head.

“You’re so lame,” Dele mutters when John and Kyle have left the room and the door has clicked shut behind them. He’s still sitting on Eric’s bed with his head on Eric’s shoulder and he doesn’t intend on moving anytime soon. He’s far too comfortable, and anyway, this is the bed he originally claimed so he’s fairly sure he’s allowed to sleep here if he wants. 

“I’m not lame,” Eric replies with a yawn. He lays his head on top of Dele’s and sinks a little deeper into the bed. The room fills with silence for a moment - except for the sound of the creaky A/C - and Dele fiddles with the tie string on his joggers. 

“You are sometimes,” he mumbles.  

“I thought you said there was nothing bad about me?” Eric adds quietly. 

Dele opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes out. His words get tangled up in his throat.  _ So you did hear me,  _ Dele thinks. Eric is quoting what Dele said about him on the bus, and he’s fairly sure this isn’t just a coincidence. 

Dele hums instead to buy himself some more time. He closes his eyes and tries to remember what else he said in his little speech. He was just thinking out loud at the time, almost certain Eric was asleep anyway, and now he’s worried that he might have said something really lame and sentimental and Eric will hold it against him forever. 

“Your clothes are too big, and you’re a loud eater,” Dele adds for no reason other than because he feels like he needs to restore his reputation. He doesn’t want Eric thinking Dele has gone soft all of a sudden. “There’s room for improvement, Diet. Oh, and you get up too early and make too much noise. You’re too heavy. I can always hear you walking around like a big monster.” 

“Anything else?” Eric chuckles. 

Dele opens his eyes and looks down at Eric’s hands in his lap. He’s sure there are like, at least ten more things he doesn’t like about Eric, but his unhelpful, tired brain can’t think of what they are right now. So he shrugs and shakes his head. 

“No. ‘Spose not.”

“I’ll work on sleeping in,” Eric concludes. And with that, he gently shakes Dele off of his shoulder and stands up next to the bed to strip off his grey hoodie and joggers. Dele knows this is his invitation to leave Eric’s bed and go get in his own, but he’s too tired and too warm to move, so he stays put and awkwardly looks around the room when Eric reduces himself to just a pair of black boxers and a large white t-shirt. He tells himself he’ll move when Eric pushes him off the bed or says something about wanting to sleep. 

But Eric does neither of those things. He simply pulls back the duvet and climbs back into the bed.

“You getting in?” Eric asks after a few seconds. 

Dele looks down at him curiously and then finds himself biting back a nervous smile. He pulls off his own jumper and jeans and slips beneath the duvet. As he does so, Eric turns out the light, bathing the room in darkness. 

“You’ve stopped being weird about the whole sharing a bed thing, then?” Dele asks light-heartedly as he settles down next to Eric in the middle of the bed. Eric is facing away from him but he turns to look back over his shoulder.

“I was never weird about it,” he answers. 

Dele rolls his eyes even though Eric can’t see him. “Then why did you get in this bed during our first night here?” 

“Because it was boiling and you complained I was too hot. You practically kicked me out of my own bed.” 

_ Oh,  _ Dele thinks. He frowns in the darkness and tries to remember the night, tries to remember if he really did kick Eric out of his own bed. He can’t lie - that  _ does  _ sound like something he would do. 

“Sorry,” Dele mutters, laughing softly. “Didn’t actually mean to do that.”

They both lie still in amiable silence for a while. Dele can feel his consciousness sinking deeper and deeper towards sleep as his idle thoughts become blurry and incoherent.  _ Want to be awake,  _ he tells himself. He wants to stay awake in this bed, right here. He doesn’t want to sleep yet because then it will be morning and this will all be gone.  _ This,  _ Dele thinks,  _ what is this?  _ This is quiet, comfortable silence with nothing but the gentle creek of the A/C, the distant hum of the mini fridge, and Eric’s steady breathing. This is Eric’s warmth in the bed next to him. This is the smell of Eric’s fabric conditioner and aftershave already seeped into the pillows. This is the silhouette of Eric’s body, the soft curve of his neck and the rising hill of his shoulder. 

This is knowing that Eric never switched beds because he wanted to, but because he had to. 

This is Dele trying and failing to fight off the lull of sleep. His consciousness has become a nonsensical mashup of hills and mini-fridges and fabric conditioner. The room is fading, and so is Dele. But he’s happy because he’s in France and he’s in bed and Eric is here.  _ Eric is here.  _ Dele could reach out and touch him if he wanted to. He could move his hand a few inches forward and find the back of Eric’s white t-shirt. He could do all of this, if only he had enough energy left in his body.

“Night, Del,” Eric mutters sleepily. His voice is hoarse and he fidgets for a moment before his body stills and his breathing slows. Dele says it back and tells him one more time how good that goal was. Or, at least he does so in his head. He can’t seem to connect his brain with his body, so he doesn’t actually do much more than twitch his hand against the bed sheets, his fingertips just managing to brush the back of Eric’s t-shirt. 

_ Goodnight, Eric. _

\--

He dreams about the first time they met at White Hart Lane, on Dele’s first day at the club. Memories flash through his brain, some of them real, some of them made up. The real ones involve Eric beaming at him in the cafeteria, ruffling his hair, greeting him with a friendly  _ alright, mate? _

He dreams about Eric giving him a one-armed hug - another real memory - and Dele having to clutch his tray awkwardly to avoid anything being knocked off. He’d opted for a single bagel and a pot of blueberry yoghurt. In his dream, there are other things on the tray too, a set of keys, some cuff links, a sea shell. 

_ Don’t bother with the blueberry yoghurt, mate, the mixed fruits is better. _ Eric had really said that, or something to that effect. He’d reached out and picked up a pot of mixed fruits yoghurt from the canteen. He’d thrown it up into the air with one hand and then caught it with the other, set it down on Dele’s tray with a smile that lit up the whole world. Dele remembers it now, completely dazzling, and so very  _ Eric. _

In his dream, Dele eats with Eric and then they go for a walk along the beach. They run into the waves together and Dele’s shrieking laughter is carried on the wind. Seagulls squawk above them. Eric calls out to him, his name, over and over. Dele calls it back. They’re too far apart, dragged away by the rising tide. Dele doesn’t like it, he wants Eric back in arm’s reach. He’s worried Eric will be carried away for good. Then they’re back in the canteen, safe, and together. Dele eats the mixed fruits yoghurt. Another real memory. 

Then they’re out on the training ground and Eric is insisting they pair up for all the drills. A real memory that could be from one of a thousand training sessions they’ve had together. It’s sunny, bright, and Eric is playful and glowing beneath the sun. They tackle each other and Eric gets told off by the coaches. He’s wearing the blue England kit now, the one he scored in. The crowd are screaming.  _ I love Eric Dier and Eric Dier loves me.  _ Dele isn’t sure if it’s him singing it or the crowd, or both. 

Eric unexpectedly twitches in his sleep and Dele wakes up with a start. He grabs the hem of Eric’s shirt while he regains consciousness, but there’s nothing wrong. Eric is fine, just dreaming. Dele edges closer to him, the chant still ringing in his head. 

He falls back to sleep, but the dreams become blurrier, and about his family rather than about Eric. He dreams about his ex-girlfriend being in France, showing up at their next game. It’s a mess of real and made-up memories. He can taste the yoghurt from the canteen. He can feel the spray of the waves on his face.

Eric had been right. The mixed fruits yoghurt is better than the blueberry. 


	6. Chapter 6

It turns out there is, in fact, a bakery. 

The sun is pouring down on the early hours of the morning in Marseille. Eric and Dele walk the quiet streets together, occasionally knocking their elbows and grinning lazily up at each other. 

Dele’s a little tired after being rudely awakened by Eric at 8am, insisting far too loudly that they should get up and go to the bakery before everyone else wakes up. Dele had initially rolled over and pulled the duvet high over his head, but then he realised where he was, whose bed he was in, and the reason why Eric sounded so loud - because he was lying next to him. 

It was only then that Dele properly blinked himself awake and rubbed his eyes. The room became clearer, and so did Eric. He was grinning, topless. Saying something about croissants. Something about pan chocolates. The  _ bonjour mon amour  _ had rolled off his tongue with an easy smile, but Dele didn’t have a clue what he was saying. He smiled back anyway. Today was already a good day. 

“How much further?” Dele asks as they stroll down another narrow, picturesque street. He picks a lilywhite flower from a window box they’re passing by and hands it to Eric without much thought.

Eric takes the flower and holds it between his fingers, looking at it with a tentative, curious smile. “Cinq minutes, Dele,” he says, as if he’s talking to the flower. 

Dele nods like he knows what  _ cinq  _ means. He knows it’s one of the numbers, but has no idea which. But there’s no way he’s going to openly admit that and give Eric gloating rights, so he just nods and hopes it’s somewhere between one and ten.

They find the bakery a few minutes later.  _ Maison de Coeur Blanc.  _ It’s pretty, painted all white with intricate black flowers stenciled outside on the walls. Dele traces them with his finger as Eric stands by the door, waiting patiently for Dele to finish admiring the artwork. Dele doesn’t even usually care for fancy artwork or architecture - that’s more Eric’s thing - but this? This has caught his attention. This is detailed and careful and looks like it would make a pretty sick tattoo. Dele likes this place already.

Eric holds the door open for him, smiles and says, “After you.” 

They’re greeted inside by a small, plump woman with a big smile and rosy cheeks. She has her hair pulled back into a bun and she looks maybe mid-40s. She begins babbling to them in French and Dele steps back and glances at Eric with wide eyes, hoping he’ll deal with the situation. 

While Eric does his best to hold a conversation in broken French, Dele ambles up to the counter and stares down at the vast array of baked goods and pastries in front of him. He has no clue what most of these are, or how to pronounce their names, but everything looks  _ incredible.  _ There’s pastries with chocolate, with jam, with custard, with raisins, with lemon, with sticky, glazed tops and with icing and with  _ cherries.  _ Dele paces up and down, trying to narrow down his initial five choices. 

“You are English?” The rosy-cheeked woman asks. She grins at Dele over the counter and laughs when he stares back at her open-mouthed. “Which one you like most?” She asks. 

“All of them,” Dele says quietly. He hooks his fingers around Eric’s wrist and pulls him to his side at the counter. “Diet, look at this, this… chocks bun thing, it’s chocolate and cream, the one with the strawberry… look, and this, and this!” Dele stabs his finger against the glass, pointing out the best-looking pastries and desserts. 

“Your name is Diet?” The lady asks brightly. Eric blushes and shakes his head. 

“No, it’s Eric.” 

“I am Joséphine. Is nice to meet you, Eric and friend. Welcome to Marseille!” 

“I love it here,” Dele beams. “Diet look at this one, with all the cream.” 

“Okay yes they all look great, but it’s 8:30am Del, we’re here for breakfast not cakes,” Eric gently reminds him. He moves behind Dele to his other side, brushing his hand around the top of Dele’s shoulders and lightly scratching his back as he does so. “Here, this stuff here.” He keeps his hand on Dele’s shoulder and Dele follows his gaze, finds the array of pastries Eric is looking down at.

“Croissants,” Dele says proudly. 

Eric winks at him. “When in France.”

“What’s this one?” Dele asks, pointing out a pastry with chocolate in the middle. 

“Pain au chocolat,” Eric tells him. Dele suddenly remembers those words coming out of Eric’s mouth in bed that morning.  _ Pan chocolates.  _ “They’re very nice.” 

“Like me,” Dele grins. Eric can’t help but laugh a little. 

“Yes, you’re a little pain au chocolat.” 

Eric keeps looking at the pastries but Dele can’t take his eyes off Eric.  _ Pain au chocolat.  _ He likes that. 

“I’ll have that, then,” Dele says confidently. He looks at Joséphine who is watching them fondly. “Um-  _ uno pain au chocolat? _ ”

He’s almost certain he got that wrong but neither Joséphine or Eric bother to correct him. She nods happily and places the largest pain au chocolat in a takeaway bag. “Good choice,” she says. She hands the paper bag over the counter to Dele and Dele immediately opens it to smell it.  _ Heaven.  _

“I’ll have-” Eric begins, but he’s interrupted by the bell that chimes when the door swings open behind them. A young French girl steps into the shop and walks up the counter, throwing her bag down with a loud sigh. 

“Est elle prête?” The girl says hurriedly. Dele glares at her when Joséphone is forced to go over and tend to her. They start talking quickly in French and Dele has no clue what they’re saying, but eventually the woman behind the counter calls out into the back of the shop for someone called Alice. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Joséphine says as she hurries back over to Eric and Dele. “My daughter friend.” 

Dele continues glaring at the girl and she glares back at him. She looks around Dele’s age, with long, dark brown hair and matching eyes. 

“Un croissant s'il vous plaît,” Eric says politely. Dele turns back to him and rolls his eyes. 

“You can get croissants in Tesco, Diet.” 

“You can get pain au chocolats in Tesco, too,” Eric laughs. He takes the paper bag from Joséphine and pays her, leaving a generous tip. 

They’re about to leave when another girl comes bounding into the shop from behind the counter. She’s tall and tanned with curly blonde hair and cherry-red painted lips. She’s blindingly beautiful. Joséphine beams at her and grabs her hand. 

“Alice, the lovely men are English, they are here for football,” she enthuses. Alice looks between Dele and Eric and then smiles brightly at them. 

“Who cares?” The brown-haired girl sighs. She says something to Alice in French and they both giggle. Joséphine seems to tell her off, but then she lets go of Alice’s hand and turns back to Eric. 

“Daughter,” she explains.

Alice kisses her mum on the cheek before darting around the counter and gesturing towards the door. The brown-haired girl walks out without looking back, but Alice stops when the bell chimes. She looks at Eric and tilts her head, flashing him her best smile. “Nice to meet you,” she says. “Enjoy the football!”

She’s out of the door before Eric can even form a reply. 

Dele turns to Eric and raises his eyebrows, suppressing a laugh. She clearly thinks they’re just here to watch the football. Dele  _ really  _ likes this place. No photos, no paparazzi, no hassle. Just cute bakeries, pain au chocolats, and empty beaches. 

“Merci, Joséphine!” Eric calls out as he holds the door open for Dele again. Dele dashes through and takes a bite out of his pastry. 

“Come on then, my pain au chocolat,” Eric says happily as he sets off in a totally different direction to the way they came. Dele pauses in the street and feels something swell in his chest at the nickname. It might be his favourite one yet. 

It’s only when Eric is half way down the street that Dele realises he’s still standing in one place. He quickly runs after him and matches his stride, fixing him a confused and curious smile.

“Where are we going?” He asks around a mouthful of chocolate pastry. 

Eric turns to smile at him, his blonde hair glowing like a halo in the sunshine. “To the beach!” He answers, as if that was obvious. 

Dele supposes that it was. 

\--

They spend their only day off building sandcastles and trying to push each other in the sea. Kyle and John somehow get wind that Dele and Eric are at the beach, and so around midday they turn up in pink shorts and straw sun hats, John’s suncream still lathered all over his shoulders.

Harry and Joe Hart turn up too, followed by Jesse, Marcus, and Jordan. It’s countless games of beach volleyball and rock skimming competitions (which Dele wins) and lunch at a nearby Italian place. Dele soaks up the sun on Jesse’s beach towel and listens to Bryson Tiller. Every couple of hours he has Eric rub sun cream into his back.

At one point he borrows Harry’s French dictionary to try and learn the rude words. They’re all lame though, or he can’t pronounce them, so he flicks through looking for other words to learn instead. He stumbles upon  _ pamplemousse  _ and says it out loud. He likes the way the word feels in his mouth, the way it makes him feel cultured. It means ‘grapefruit’, so he figures he might even be able to slip it into conversation with Eric one morning and impress him with his sudden French fluency. He imagines Eric not even knowing what it means, and Dele having to tell him.  _ That’ll show him,  _ he thinks smugly. 

It isn’t until an hour later that he actually gets to show off the new word he’s learned. Eric comes diving onto the sand next to him, soaking wet from the sea and out of breath. Dele looks him up and down from behind his sunglasses and punches him softly on the shoulder.

“Hey Diet, I learned a new word,” he says proudly. 

“Yeah?” Eric replies, picking up the French dictionary that has been discarded next to the beach towel. 

“Pamplemousse,” Dele says, then he grins and combs his fingers through Eric’s wet hair. “I can even tell you what it means.” 

Eric looks at him with a gentle smile and Dele suddenly realises that this is bilingual Eric he’s talking to here. Annoyingly intelligent, exasperatingly cultured Eric Dier. Of course he’s going to know what pamplemousse means. 

But he pretends not to. He shrugs and smiles and says, “Go on then. What does it mean?” 

“Grapefruit,” Dele answers shyly. He laughs and Eric does too. “Like your fat head.” 

“Like my fat head,” Eric confirms, rolling his eyes half-heartedly. “It’s a good word.” 

“My pamplemousse,” Dele says, softer this time. His fingers are still in Eric’s hair. He combs it back one more time and then pats Eric on the top of his head. 

“My pain au chocolat,” Eric replies. He scrunches up his face against the sun and smiles. “Come play beach volleyball. I want you on my team.”

\--

Somewhere late in the evening, Dele finds himself back at the hotel eating dinner with everyone in the restaurant. He hasn’t had chance to shower yet so his skin is still soaked in sun and peppered with sand. He brushes it off his elbows and knees and sits slumped in his chair. He’s tired, and Eric is upstairs showering, so he’s been left to deal with Jesse and Marcus alone. He watches them from across the table, annoyed at how  _ obvious  _ they’re becoming. Jesse stares at Marcus for too long, laughs too often, sits too close.

He knows it’s not  _ real.  _ They’re not really doing anything they shouldn’t be doing, they’re just close. They’re just best friends. Like him and Eric. It’s not real. It’s fine.  _ It’s fine.  _

Dele shovels the rest of his mashed potato into his mouth and pushes his plate away. “Gonna go bed,” he says quickly, standing up. Marcus nods at him and Jesse pulls a face. 

“Yous just got ‘ere.”

“Tired,” Dele answers shortly. He shoots Marcus a polite smile and heads out of the restaurant. 

Eric is still in the shower when he gets to their room. Dele collapses on his bed and turns on the TV, but it’s all French soaps and complicated quiz shows, so he turns it off again and scrolls through Instagram on his phone instead. Joe Hart has tagged him in a story. He opens it and finds a boomerang of him and Eric playing beach volleyball against Harry and Jordan. He smiles at it and watches the rest of Joe’s story: a selfie of him in front of the sea, the volleyball boomerang, a shot of his lunch at the Italian restaurant, a photo of Jesse and John trying to dig as deep as they can in the sand with €2 plastic spades, and finally a boomerang of Jesse jumping up onto Marcus’ back and throwing up a peace sign. You can see Marcus catching him easily, his hands steady on Jesse’s thighs. Dele watches the boomerang a few times and then sighs and texts his brother for a while, asking for an update on the family. 

Eric finally drags himself out of the shower just after 8pm. He nods a quick hello at Dele before flinging his towel at him. Dele catches it in one hand and tosses it back. 

“Dick,” he mutters, for no reason other than Eric is walking around in just his black boxers like he owns the place, throwing towels where he wants, letting his wet hair drip down onto his bare chest. Dele really hates him, sometimes. 

“You eaten?” Eric asks as he pulls on a white t-shirt. Dele stares at him and wonders if his arms were always that tanned. 

“Huh?” Dele says, then shakes his head to clear his thoughts. “Oh, yeah.” 

Eric steps into a pair of loose-fitting grey shorts and his digs his sliders out from under his bed. “I’m going to grab something so I’ll be back in half an hour,” he says. He mimics Dele’s famous wave and grins stupidly. “Don’t miss me too much.”

Dele rolls his eyes at him and watches him leave the room.  _ Like I’d ever miss you,  _ he thinks childishly, but suddenly the room feels very empty and quiet, and he’s just realised he forgot to tell Eric what he found out at dinner. He takes his phone out and starts typing. 

_ Jesse said marcus walked in on him wanking in bed this morning lol xx _

He sends the message and then waits patiently for a reply. 

**Only jesse lol**

Dele frowns. Only Jesse what? And why no kisses?

_ Wud u be mad if u walked in on me lol? Xx _

**No I’d just ignore you x**

_ U wudnt join in? ;) xx _

**Shut up x**

_ Enjoy ur dinner lol. Miss u pamplemousse!!!!!! Xx _

**Pain au chocolat xx**

Dele drops his phone onto the bed and bites his bottom lip to stop himself smiling. The brief bad mood that had settled heavy on his shoulders from the lack of kisses seems to have washed away. 

He jumps up from his bed and grabs a towel before heading into the shower.

\--   

Dele can’t sleep. He’s completely exhausted and his body is screaming at him to  _ just sleep _ , but he can’t switch his mind off. He lies in the dark and stares up at the ceiling, listening to Eric’s heavy breathing in the bed next to him. His own bed feels too big, too cold, too empty. 

He looks sideways at Eric through the darkness. He can just make out Eric’s silhouette, completely still and facing away from him. He can see the back of Eric’s head resting on the pillow.  _ Pamplemousse.  _ Dele sighs. It’s almost midnight.

For lack of anything else to do, he quietly reaches into the draw of his bedside cabinet and finds the seashell that Eric gave him. He settles onto his side and turns the shell over in his fingers, comforted by its smooth surface against his fingertips. It’s dainty and fragile, and Dele sometimes fills with panic if he can’t find it within a few seconds of opening the draw. It’s just a seashell, and Dele knows there are a billion more out there, but he wants  _ this  _ one. It feels poignant, like a key to their friendship. He turns it over in his hands and wonders how the shell feels about all of this - about being displaced, about sitting in Dele’s drawer, about being picked by Eric Dier among thousands of other shells he could have picked instead. Does the shell know how lucky it is? 

_ Get a grip,  _ Dele thinks, sighing at himself harder this time and covering his face with his hands.  _ When did I become so lame?  _

He takes his phone out from under his pillow and texts Harry. 

_ U up? _

Harry reads the message within a few seconds and starts typing. Dele almost wants to roll his eyes at how long it takes him to reply. He knows Harry will assume something is wrong. 

**Yes im still up. Is everything ok mate??**

_ Yh just cant sleep. bored lol. What r u doing? _

**Watching French TV. Not very good lol. I cant sleep either.**

_ Wanna hang out for a bit? _

**Yeah ok. Want to meet me in lounge downstairs? Harty is asleep**

_ Yh be down in 5 x _

Dele sends the message and then stares at it. He’s never sent a kiss to Harry Kane before, and now he’s worried Harry will notice it and feel weird. It’s not that he doesn’t send kisses, it’s just that he doesn’t send them to Harry, because, well, Harry doesn’t send them either. Actually, Dele doesn’t really send them to anyone but Eric, and sometimes Kyle Walker, but those are ironic and usually sarcastic.  _ Sorry u suck at uno u tosser x x x.  _ That sort of thing.

He opens up his last conversation with Eric, from when Dele had gotten out of the shower and Eric was still downstairs eating. 

_ Come back soon plssssss ty ty i wanna play uno but dnt wanna come downstairs xx _

**Why? x**

_ Idk just tired dnt wanna talk to everyone. What u eating??? Xxx _

**Chicken and rice. Ads wants me to play chess with him after this xx**

_ Oh. R u gonna? x _

**No x**

_ Why? X _

**You just said you want to play uno?**

_ Yh I do!! Wanna beat u again. come up when ur done eating. Loser buys next breakfast from the bakery!!!! Xxx _

**Deal xx**

_ Can u bring snacks up plssssss xx _

**What sort of snacks? Theres stuff in the minifridge? Xx**

_ Its boring stuff can u sneak something fun upstairs???? Xxx _

**Like what? X**

_ Chocolate xx _

**If you have too much sugar before bed you’ll be up all night. Xx**

_ Ugh u sound like H. shut up n bring me chocolate. xxx _

**I’ll bring you some of the chocolate rice cakes. That’s all they have anyways xx**

_ Ur the best :) xxx _

Dele puts his phone in his pocket and grabs the grey England jacket from the back of the armchair on his way out. 

He finds Harry in the hotel lounge in a pair of navy pyjamas. Matching top and bottoms with the England crest on the pocket. Dele wants to make a remark about the full-length pyjama bottoms looking ridiculous, but he knows Harry won’t even find it embarrassing. And anyway, he himself is wearing black shorts with his grey England hoodie and his trademark socks and sliders. Not exactly his best look.  

“Morning,” Harry greets, lifting a steady hand. He’s settled into one of the sofas by the big windows. Dele sits on the sofa opposite him and folds his legs beneath himself. They’re the only ones down there, apart from the two girls at reception who are muttering quietly to themselves. 

“What’s kept you up?” Dele asks. He buries his hands into the pockets of the England hoodie. It smells nice, like fabric conditioner. “Not like you to still be awake at this time.” 

“Yeah,” Harry agrees. He shrugs. “Girl trouble.” 

Dele stares at him, raising his eyebrows in question until Harry sighs and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and holding his head in his hands. 

“Kate asking me questions again,” he mumbles into his hands. “About when we’re getting married, having kids, all that stuff. Now that I’ve signed the new contract at Spurs she wants to know what the plan is.”

“And what  _ is _ the plan?” Dele asks, chewing his bottom lip as he watches Harry shake his head and laugh despite himself. 

“I don’t have one, mate. Just… win the Euros.” 

Dele laughs. “I don’t think Kate’s waiting around for you to win the Euros, H.” 

“I know I’m going to be with her for the rest of my life so why the rush? I’m not even 23 yet.” Harry leans back against the sofa and looks off into the distance for a moment, deep in thought. “I know I love her, I just don’t want to-” 

“How do you know?” Dele interrupts. He swallows the lump in his throat and tries to poise his question as casually as possible. “How do you know that you love her?” 

“You know when you love someone, Dele.” 

“How?” Dele presses. 

Harry exhales and shrugs. “You just know, don’t you. When I picture the person I want to fall asleep with every night, it’s her. When I think about the person I want to go get breakfast with every morning, it’s her. When I think about who I want to be walking on the beach with when I’m sixty years old, it’s her. Like I said, I just don’t see why we have to rush.” 

Dele nods calmly, but he feels a little sick. He tells himself it’s because Harry has his life so put together, and Dele doesn’t. Dele still plays video games in his boxers. He comforts himself by burying the lower half of his face into the England hoodie and gently inhaling the fabric conditioner. 

“You think you’ll be walking on the beach with her when you’re sixty?” Dele asks eventually, smiling to himself. It’s a cute image - Harry Kane, sixty years old, probably still England’s captain and probably still one of Dele’s best friends. 

“Yeah, I hope so,” Harry laughs. His gaze flits down Dele for a second and a curious smile lifts the corner of his mouth. “That Eric’s hoodie?” He asks. “Looks a bit big for you, mate.” 

Dele looks down at the grey hoodie he’s been sniffing. Harry’s right - it  _ is  _ too big. And maybe that’s why it smells nice - because it’s Eric’s. It’s Eric’s fabric conditioner. The one that smells like his house, like his oversized t-shirts, like his bed sheets. 

Dele balls the sleeves up around his hands and shrugs. 

“Not sure,” he answers. He digs around in the pocket and brings out the shell. 

“What’s what?” Harry asks. 

Dele keeps his eyes on the shell, still amazed by its smoothness and soft pink interior. The perfect seashell. “Eric gave me it. From the beach,” Dele says without looking up. 

A moment of silence settles between them while Dele looks at the shell and Harry watches him. Eventually, Harry clears his throat and says, “It’s nice. You and Eric. Your friendship.” 

Dele nods. He still can’t stop looking at the shell. He wonders if he’ll walk on the beach with Eric when he’s sixty. He hopes so.

“Yeah,” he says quietly, almost too quietly. He isn’t sure if he said it loud enough for Harry to hear him. “It’s nice,” he adds.

“So what’s kept you up?” Harry asks. A tactical change in subject that makes Dele finally look up at him. 

“Oh,” he begins. His mind jumps to the real reason:  _ bed too big, too empty, too cold. Eric’s not there. I can’t hold his t-shirt, or touch the back of his neck, or smell the shampoo in his hair.  _ He stops himself before he’s forced to think about something he’s not ready to think about yet. 

Instead, he presses his mouth into a thin smile. “Had too much sugar before bed.”


	7. Chapter 7

In the five days leading up to the next match, Dele is kept on a tight schedule. Wake up at 7am to Eric singing Portuguese jingles - sometimes tossing a pillow or some shorts or a sock at his face, a quick 10- minute shower, a sunny walk down down to the bakery, croissants and pain au chocolats (which they eat on the way back to the hotel because Dele isn’t technically supposed to be eating chocolate for breakfast every day), then training at 9am, lunch at midday, training again from 2pm, sports massage and ice bath at 5pm, and then dinner from 6-7pm. After that, Dele is free to do as he pleases, but he’s mostly too tired to do anything other than crash in his room, destroy Eric at Uno, and fall asleep in whichever bed he happens to be sitting on at the time. Sometimes Eric wakes him up and tells him it’s too hot and that he needs to sleep in his own bed. Sometimes he doesn’t. 

Sometimes Dele wakes up with his knee pressed against Eric’s thigh, or with his hand resting barely an inch from Eric’s beneath the duvet, their fingers curled towards each other with only a few centimetres separating them. Sometimes Dele wakes up hard, but there’s only one time he actually does something about it. 

It’s the day of the England vs Wales match - the day they need to leave Marseille for Lens. Dele has woken up earlier than usual because it’s already too hot and the morning sun is streaming through a gap in the curtains, landing right on his face. He opens his eyes and blinks himself awake, groaning a little. 

He turns and finds Eric asleep next to him, lying on his back and breathing softly. He’s taken his shirt off in the night, apparently, and the duvet is now only on the lower half of the bed because Dele’s pretty sure he woke up at 3am and tried to kick it off. Eric’s grey shorts hang low on his waist and Dele, in his sleepy haze, finds himself staring at the trail of hair on Eric’s lower stomach, where the skin is tanned and golden. 

Dele shakes himself a little and pulls his eyes away. He reasons that he wasn’t actually staring at anything in particular, that he was just waking up that’s all. He closes his eyes and tries to get back to sleep, but he can’t, because he’s hard. 

With a put-upon sigh, Dele considers getting out of bed and hopping in the shower. Maybe he can get ready early and have a wank in the shower while he’s at it. It’s probably almost time to get up soon, anyway. 

With one hand he pushes against his dick in his shorts, willing it to just take care of itself. With the other, he grabs his phone from the bedside cabinet. 6:04am.  _ Fuck sake.  _

Dele presses his fingertips into his eyelids and thinks for a moment.  _ Could get up, could shower, could wank, could even wake Eric up by chucking a wet towel at his face.  _ But all of those things require effort and energy that he doesn’t have right now. He’s annoyed that he’s woken up early, annoyed that the sunlight has hit his pillow  _ right  _ where his face was, and he’s annoyed that Eric is just lying there, stretched out and topless and warm with sleep. His blonde hair is messier than usual and his lips are slightly parted. He looks calm and peaceful, but Dele figures if he has to be awake, then Eric does too, so he decides he’s going to stick his fingers in Eric’s mouth. 

Dele turns to his side and slides one hand under his pillow to lay on it. He brings the other to Eric’s face, hovers it just over his mouth, his finger at the ready. He thinks about how funny it will be when Eric wakes up startled. He thinks about how he’ll tell all the guys about this later, about how he woke Eric up by sticking his fingers in Eric’s mouth. They’ll all laugh about it. He knows they will. 

So why can’t Dele do it? Why is his hand beginning to tremble the closer he gets to Eric’s lips? And why is he thinking about touching them?

The urge overwhelms him until Dele snatches his hand away and swallows thickly. He turns onto his back and sighs. He’s still hard, and it’s still only 6:09am. 

Deciding that he can’t be bothered to go into the shower, and reasoning that Eric is a heavy sleeper anyway, Dele shoves his hand inside his boxers and closes his eyes. He takes a few shallow breaths as he finds his normal rhythm. 

He can’t exactly watch porn on his phone in case Eric wakes up, so he has to settle for his imagination. He pictures his usual stuff: three girls naked on his bed, touching each other and asking him to join in. He pictures having all three of them giving him head at the same time. He pictures one of them climbing on top of him, pinning him to the bed and riding him. Usual stuff, except it’s boring. He can’t get off and he’s getting frustrated, so after a minute has passed, he tears down his mental barrier and lets his mind wander. 

It goes straight to Eric scoring the goal for England in their last match, it goes to the moment Dele reached him after the goal, the moment he thought he could kiss him. Then it goes to Dele scoring, and they’re in the dressing room together. No one else is around. It’s just him and Eric. Eric’s on his knees, he’s sucking Dele off, telling Dele how good the goal was.  _ No no no.  _ Dele forces himself to go back to the three girls, but it’s not working. He can’t remember what they look like. Blonde, probably. Golden skin. Tanned. A bright, happy smile.  _ No no no.  _

Dele pauses, biting down on his bottom lip in frustration. He shouldn’t be thinking about this, and he knows it. He hates himself for it. Why must his mind get off on the most random, nonsensical stuff? He tells himself it’s about the goal, not about Eric sucking him off for it. That’s what he tells himself when he steals a glance at Eric sleeping next to him, when he lets his mind go back to the dressing room scene, and when he’s spilling his come across the inside of his boxers. 

\--

The flight to Lens is stressful, to say the least. John realises he’s left his headphones in his hotel room in Marseille, Jesse almost loses his passport on the luggage carousel, and Jordan has just informed everyone that there are currently thunderstorms in Lens, with hail and rain predicted to last all day. 

Roy shouts over the ruckus on the tarmac to remind everyone that until he is officially told otherwise, the game will go ahead as scheduled. He ushers everyone onto the private plane and Dele stalks down the aisle and sulks into a seat at the back. He doesn't want to leave sunny Marseille for rainy Lens, even if it is only for one night. They haven’t even left yet and he already misses the beach and the bakery and the early morning walks along the seafront with Eric. 

“You know we’re coming back, right?” Eric asks out of nowhere, throwing himself down into the seat next to Dele. Dele quietly pockets the seashell he was fiddling with and forces a smile. 

“I know, I just hate playing in the rain,” he says. He stares out of the window, taking in the last of the blazing sunshine. He knows he’s being dramatic, knows they’re only going to Lens for one night and then they’re flying right back to Marseille for the warm weather training. But he’s worried about what happens when they get back and move to a different hotel. The room allocations are down to Roy, but sometimes if the hotel is big enough, they get a room to themselves. Which is fine. It’s fine. It’s just that Dele doesn't really like being alone and, even though he won’t admit it out loud, he’s grown quite fond of being woken up to Eric’s stupid Portuguese jingles. 

“I had the weirdest dream about you last night,” Eric says nonchalantly. Dele snaps his gaze away from the window and turns to Eric, his eyebrows already raised. 

“What happened?” He asks. 

Eric shrugs and shakes his head, signalling that he can’t remember. “We were on a boat, I think. I don’t know. Harry was there. Think we were sailing, or something. I just remember you jumping in the water and you couldn’t get back on to the boat so I jumped in the water with you.” 

Dele rolls his eyes. “Not very helpful, Diet. You could have thrown a ladder down or something.”

Eric laughs and shrugs, digging around in his bag at his feet. “I know,” he says, his voice muffled as he searches for his headphones or his book or whatever nerdy entertainment he’s brought with him for the flight - as if talking to Dele isn’t enough. “I just didn’t want you to be alone.” 

Dele feels a weird tug in his chest. He smiles softly to himself and looks out of the window as the plane begins to taxi to the runway. 

“Always looking out for me, aren’t ya?” Dele mutters when Eric sits back up right and pops an earbud in. He looks down at Eric’s phone. “What are you listening to?” 

“Podcast about the rise of football in Portugal. You want to listen?” Eric asks, offering Dele the second earbud. 

Dele makes an unimpressed face at him and makes a show of taking out his phone instead. “Absolutely not.” 

\--

With tall black walls and a narrow tunnel that feeds out into a roaring crowd, the Bollaert-Delelis Stadium is a little intimidating. 

Dele is three back from the front of the line, behind captain Wayne, Raheem, and Harry. Harry turns around and fist bumps him, asks him if he’s feeling nervous. Dele nods, bounces on his heels, and swigs from his water bottle again. 

Behind him, everyone else is falling into line. Roy is talking with Joe Hart, Danny and Kyle are bickering about something, and Lallana is re-tying his laces. Dele catches Eric’s eye at the back of the line and shoots him a quick, anxious smile. Eric winks back at him and Dele rolls his eyes and laughs. Just like that, the nerves wash away. 

“Ready?” Harry asks when they’re given the signal to walk out into the roaring crowd. Dele nods. He’s ready. 

The first half mostly goes like clockwork. It’s a cycle of holding in midfield, breaking up their attack, and then countering. England dominate in possession and Dele finds himself messing around with the ball, growing in confidence every time he pulls off a nutmeg or a tricky turn that leaves two defenders trailing after him. It’s all fun and games, even with the rain pelting down on them, and it looks like England are definitely on to score. 

That is, until Bale gets a free kick.

Dele doesn’t worry too much; it’s almost half-time and Bale is 35 yards out. The rain is coming down heavy now and this is  _ Wales.  _ They can beat Wales. It’s all going to be just fine.

He joins the defensive wall and presses the side of his body against Eric’s, glancing at him to confirm they’re all in position. Eric nods with a stoic, serious expression. There’s rain dripping down his face from his hair. His kit is soaked - they’re all soaked. 

The referee blows his whistle. 

The ball flies just clear of the wall, but Joe Hart has enough time to react. Dele turns just in time to see Joe get a hand on the ball, and then his heart is in his throat, because all Joe manages to do is thump it into the bottom corner where it bounces over the line and into the net. 

Dele stares at the spot where the ball has rolled in and can’t quite believe his eyes. Eric groans loudly next to him, but Dele is still frozen to the spot. Surely not.  _ Surely not.  _ That did  _ not  _ just happen. 

“Come on,” Eric says, his hand strong on Dele’s shoulder. Dele turns into it, looks at Eric with an open mouth. “Come on, it’s fine, we’re gonna be fine, Del.” Eric starts jogging back to the center of the field and Dele follows. 

Half time is grim. Roy shouts at them all in the dressing room and insists that they’re all ‘playing in flip flops’, tells them they’re not taking the game seriously. Nobody can get a word in and Dele starts to feel anger bubbling up in his chest. He’s wet and cold and miserable, and he hates that the whole team are being blamed for Joe’s mistake. It was a free kick that Joe had plenty of time to save. It was on no one but him. Everyone else has been playing fine. Sure, they haven’t scored yet, but they’ve dominated the midfield, they’ve defended well, and they’ve already had ten attempts to Wales’ two. This is not a team failure, it’s Joe Hart’s, and Dele is about three seconds away from saying that out loud. 

“We got it, boss,” Eric says, right as Dele has opened his mouth to argue back. Dele turns to look at Eric sitting next on him on the bench. He looks equally as furious about this lecture as what Dele feels. His face is red, his fists clenched in his lap. “We know what to do. We can bring it back, boys.” 

The team cheer in agreement, drowning out Roy’s protests. Eric stands up and everyone follows in his footsteps, preparing to head back out into the tunnel. 

“You should be captain,” Dele says before he can stop himself. He’s at Eric’s side, and he doesn’t realise that he’s wrapped his fingers around Eric’s wrist until they both look down. Dele blushes and peels his fingers away, brushes them through his hair instead. 

“I think we’d all heard enough,” Eric laughs bitterly. He towel dries his hair and then hands the towel to Dele to do the same.

Dele nods in agreement and rubs the top of his head with the towel. Apparently he does it wrong, though, because Eric sighs, takes it off him, and starts doing it for him. Dele tries to duck away because he’s  _ not  _ a child and he’s _ not  _ having Eric towel dry his hair for him, but Eric holds his arm and tells him to stand still. Dele rolls his eyes dramatically under the towel but does as he’s told anyway. 

“Serious, though,” Dele says from beneath the towel. He stares down at Eric’s legs as Eric continues to gently dry his hair. “Like you scored last game, and you’re the only one brave enough to stand up to the gaffer when he’s on one. You should be wearing that armband.” 

Dele doesn’t even know why he’s saying all of this. Maybe it’s the anger at Roy and the need to criticise his decisions - even if deep down he does believe that Wayne is a good captain. Maybe it’s him just wanting to protect his team, which includes Eric. Or maybe it’s because Eric actually  _ would  _ make a good captain, and Dele knows that. 

Eric stops towelling his hair and smiles sheepishly. He touches the side of Dele’s arm for a second. “Thanks, pain au chocolat.”

\--

The second half gets underway and Dele makes it an absolute priority to score. He feels like it will prove some kind of point to Eric, that Eric’s intervention at half time has given the team a surge of motivation. He thinks that if he can score, it will prove to Eric that he’s captain material. 

_ If I can just score then maybe Eric will _ \- Dele’s thoughts suddenly go completely off course as he remembers his little morning quickie next to Eric in bed. He’s hit with the image of Eric on his knees in the dressing room, sucking Dele off because Dele scored. Dele’s throat goes dry as he tries to push the image out of his head. He tells himself that’s  _ not  _ the reason he wants to score and he’s being absolutely ridiculous. He doesn’t want Eric to do that because a) he’s not gay, b) Eric is his best mate, and c) just  _ no.  _

The ball falls to Dele’s feet and he crosses it to Vardy, but Vardy slips on the wet grass and loses it in the box. Dele can’t help but think Harry would have finished that, had he still been on the pitch. 

Regardless, he pushes on. 

Vardy fucks up another chance, and this time Dele doesn’t hold his tongue. He passes by Vardy as they run back in preparation for the goal kick and bitterly mutters “nice one, mate”. It’s beneath him, he knows that, and he knows that Vardy can finish as well as anyone. It’s raining hard, the pitch is slippery. Dele is just frustrated and angry, and he can’t help but think that if their positions were switched and Dele was up top, he would have scored that.

Three minutes later, Vardy smashes it home. It’s a fumble in the box and mostly down to the oppositions’ incompetence, but it’s a goal regardless. Dele runs to join in the celebrations and only stops gritting his teeth when he feels Eric press up behind him in the huddle. 

Play resumes. Dele tries and tries for a goal, getting more frustrated with himself every time his shot is off target or blocked. He swears under his breath at the defenders, at Ben Davies, his own teammate from Spurs. Right now, he doesn’t care. He’s seeing red and if he doesn’t score in this game then he might as well just give up playing football altogether. 

The minutes tick by, from 60 to 70 to 80. England continue to dominate but they can’t get another goal, despite now bringing on Rashford, too. Dele links up with him a few times, but a bad pass from Wayne means that Dele’s biggest chance is scuffed before he can even get a foot on it. He curses again, gritting his teeth and shaking off Marcus’ hand from his back. He doesn’t need reassurance, he needs a fucking goal. 

Eric catches his gaze through the rain and mouths the words  _ you okay? _ Dele takes a deep breath. He calms himself and nods. Raindrops drip from the ends of his eyelashes and he wipes them away hastily. 

_ I just want to score a goal,  _ he thinks pathetically.  _ You have, and now I want to, too. I want to share that with you, celebrate with you. I wanted it to be me and you who scored the first two goals. I was so proud of you and I want you to feel the same about me.  _

80 minutes turns into 90, with three minutes added time. They’ve got three minutes to turn this around and Dele is mentally and physically exhausted. 

The chance comes in the 92nd minute. The ball falls perfectly at Dele’s feet and he trickles it past the Welsh defenders closing in on him. He makes it look easy. With the last burst of energy he has left, he runs the ball into the box, ready to take his shot. But something goes wrong, he runs too fast and loses his footing on the wet grass. He can’t get the ball back quick enough and panic rises up in his throat like fire. 

And then there’s screaming, and Daniel Sturridge is running to the corner post, and they’ve done it. Sturridge collected the ball from Dele’s blunder and netted it. England have won. 

Dele stands on the spot, staring at the ball in the net. He’s happy, and angry, and relieved, and disappointed. It hits him in waves until he finally gets a grip of himself and reminds himself of why he’s here: for the team. 

Before he knows it, he’s at the corner flag celebrating with everyone else. 

\--

Roy is in a considerably better mood after the match, but Dele still doesn't talk to him. He’s doing his best to compartmentalise his frustration at not scoring and his relief at at least winning the game. Half of him is grateful that Sturridge was there to finish the job, but the other half is disappointed that he wasn’t able to do it himself. 

He packs those thoughts away in the back of his mind and tongues the inside of his cheek as he unlaces his boots. He’s got the taste of exhaustion in his mouth, metallic and bitter. His legs are aching, his ribs feel sore from a bad tackle, and his kit is wet and cold. 

Nobody pays him any attention as he pulls off his boots and sits miserably on the bench, just watching. Piece by piece, he peels off his kit and lets it fall to the floor.  _ Cheer up,  _ he tells himself,  _ you won!  _

Harry sits down next to him and nudges him with his shoulder. “What’s up, Del?” He asks seriously. His cheeks are still flushed and his hair is wet and dripping down his face. Dele looks at him and shrugs, forcing a smile that the knows Harry won’t buy. 

“We could have played better,” he says, but he means  _ I could have played better. _

Harry laughs and slaps him on the back. “We won, mate. That’s all that matters.” 

“Joe should have-” Dele begins.

“We can’t turn on each other,” Harry interrupts. He shakes his head softly. “We can’t do that, Dele. Don’t do that.” 

Dele closes his mouth and nods. He sighs, because he knows Harry is right - turning on each other is the worst thing a team can do, especially in a competition like this. 

“Here he is,” Harry says brightly, suddenly distracted by someone walking towards them. Dele looks up to see Eric approaching with a big smile on his face. He slumps back further in his seat and crosses his arms across his chest. 

“Hello boys,” Eric greets. He stands in front of them in his grey shorts and his Adidas socks and sliders. He’s just showered, and there’s a towel draped around his shoulders. Dele looks at him and then looks away, off to the side somewhere. Just anywhere that isn’t Eric’s stupid tanned body and his nice hair and his ability to score goals.

“You didn’t fancy scoring today?” Harry asks him with an amused smirk. 

“Nah, thought I’d leave that to Del,” Eric answers easily. Dele snaps his gaze to him and frowns.  _ Don’t take the piss out of me,  _ he thinks angrily. 

“I didn’t score.” 

“Close enough. You did all the work. Sturridge just tapped it in.” Eric shrugs and Harry nods in agreement. Dele looks between them both, his expression softening. 

“It was Sturridge’s goal, not mine.” 

“On paper, yeah. But everyone who saw it knows it was your goal,” Eric replies. 

“I’m going to jump in the shower. See you soon, yeah?” Harry says. He pats Dele on the shoulder and smiles at him before getting up and walking across the busy dressing room. 

Dele chews on his bottom lip when Eric sits down next to him, looking at the side of his face curiously. 

“What’s wrong?” He asks quietly. 

Dele shrugs and swallows around the lump in his throat. “Wanted to score,” he mutters eventually. 

“We all did,” Eric laughs. 

“But you actually have. I want to score in the Euros. What if I go the whole competition without scoring? What will people think of me?” Dele asks in a frenzied rush. He takes a deep breath and tries to calm himself. He knows he’s getting worked up over nothing.

“They’ll think you’re one of the brightest, best England players we’ve got on the squad - because you are. My goal was a lucky free kick. Your assist today was ninety nine percent of the goal. You’ve already scored in my eyes,” Eric says. He waits for Dele to look at him and then gently raises his eyebrows and smiles. “I’m glad you’re here, I’m glad you play for England. This is where you belong.” 

Dele knocks his knee into Eric’s and shoots him a warm, knowing smile in response. It’s the same speech he gave Eric when they were playing cards and he was feeling sentimental. He touches his knee back to Eric’s and leaves it there, taking comfort in the warmth of Eric’s skin against his own. 

“Thanks, Dier.”

\--

Dele turns over in his lumpy, too-hard bed. It’s scratchy and cold and uncomfortable in every way imaginable. The lights are off in his room so he stares up through the darkness, listening to his own breathing. 

Aside from that, the room is silent. 

No creaky A/C, no humming mini-fridge, and no Eric snoring softly in the bed next to him. 

They’ve all got their own rooms tonight, and Dele hates it. 

He pulls his phone out from under his pillow for the 17th time in the past ten minutes and scrolls through his apps looking for a game to play. He’s already finished Cut the Rope and he’s bored of his dumb Clash of Clans game. He keeps swiping through his folders until he comes across TouchRoom.

He opens the app and waits for it to load. It pings softly as the  _ connecting…  _ pulsates on the screen. 

Dele smiles at his phone. It’s an app he found a few weeks ago and he told Eric to download it too. Dele touches the screen and it sends a notification to Eric, then when Eric opens the app, he can see where on the screen Dele is touching. If he touches the same place, they both get a vibration to let them know they’re synced. It really doesn’t do much more than that, but Dele jokingly said they can use it for nights when they’re apart. 

The app connects and Dele is prompted to touch the white box on his screen. He picks the top left corner because that’s where Eric scored his free kick. 

_ Connecting… _

Dele waits with his finger pressed to the screen. He doesn’t know why he suddenly feels so nervous, but he wonders if it’s because it’s gone midnight and Eric is probably asleep and this is  _ really  _ lame, even for Dele. He’s about to take his finger off when he feels the vibration. 

_ You’re connected!  _

Dele grins at the smiley face that pops up and drifts to the top of his screen. He picks the smiley face to send back and then closes the app, opening WhatsApp instead. 

_ U still up? X _

Dele waits. He stares at the screen, watching the two ticks appear, and then waits for them to turn blue. They do, and Eric starts typing. 

**Yes**

_ I think my room is haunted lol x _

**Why?**

_ Idk its creepy quiet. Dont really like being alone in these weird hotels _

**You never did like thunderstorms x**

_ No I dont lol x _

_ What you doing? X _

**Talking to you x**

_ What floor are you on? x  _

Dele knows that Eric is on the fourth floor, but he doesn’t know what else to say and he wants to keep the conversation going before Eric goes to sleep. 

**Fourth. You?**

_ Third _

_ My room is defs haunted. I might get killed in the night btw x _

**I’ll remember you fondly x**

_ Say nice things about me at my funeral x _

**‘He was my pain au chocolat and my pain in le ass’**

_ Lol, sounds about right  _

**Great footballer though**

_ Thanks :) _

**And a great friend**

_ :)  _

_ what else lol _

**What else what?**

_ What else would you say? _

**You’re not going to die Del**

_ What if I do and thats the last thing u ever said to me? _

**Then haunt me x**

Dele looks at the message until his vision goes blurry. He’s tired and his eyes are watering. He should probably try and sleep, but now he’s imagining haunting Eric, following him around all day and messing with him. He’d tip things over, or pull Eric’s keys just out of reach whenever Eric went to pick them up. He’d tap Eric’s shoulder and then run away. He’d pull the duvet off him in the night like the ghosts do in all the scary movies. But he’d also watch over him every minute of every day. He’d play with Eric’s hair, he’d help him out in matches, and he’d probably crawl up into bed with him - even if Eric can’t see him, or has no idea that he’s there. He’d get in anyway. Because just like Eric said he’d jump into the ocean to be with Dele, Dele knows he would jump right in too.  _ Wouldn’t want you to be alone,  _ he thinks. 

**You fell asleep?**

_ No, still here. Just imagining haunting u lol x _

**As if you don’t pester me enough already x**

_ Might pester u for the rest of ur life if ur lucky xx _

**Lol. I suppose I can accept that**

**Miss you x**

_ Miss u too x _

**Goodnight pain au chocolat x**

_ Nite nite pamplemousse x _


	8. Chapter 8

It’s in the mornings that it hits him, when Dele wakes up to sunlight streaming in between the gap in the curtains and birds singing outside. When he yawns and stretches and pads silently across the room to the balcony, stealing a glance at Eric on the way. He’s usually sleeping soundly, bed sheets tangled around his legs or discarded on the floor. He’s usually sprawled out on his stomach, his golden hair a mess from tossing and turning all night and mumbling  _ it’s too fucking hot, Del.  _ It’s in the mornings that Dele always smiles at Eric’s warm, sleeping body and thinks about how funny it would be to tickle his feet or jump on him, wake him up with some kind of prank that leaves him startled. He doesn’t, though. He just slips out onto the balcony, settles into the little armchair Eric has put out there for him, and watches the city awake from slumber. 

That’s when it hits him, how in love he is.

There’s just something about Marseille that has stolen his heart in a way he’s never experienced before. It takes him by surprise and leaves him a little breathless, because this is  _ so  _ not Dele. To feel this way, to fall in love with beaches and seashells and bakeries. To wake up early in anticipation of the morning walk for croissants and  _ pain au chocolats _ . To grin through even the most testing moments of their training sessions, because it’s gorgeous weather and they’re overlooking the sea and he’s got his best friend in the whole world by his side, usually grinning right back at him.

To feel his stomach sink whenever he thinks about having to leave and this all being over. 

This feeling, it’s all very new and ridiculous and a little bit scary. Because Dele doesn’t fall in love. Not like this. Not with  _ Marseille.  _

Dele has been to nice places before, so why this particular nice place has captured so much of his affection, he truly doesn’t know. He’s been to Ibiza, he’s been Majorca, he’s been to L.A. He’s partied on some of the best beaches in the world, seen the hottest girls and eaten at the most prestigious restaurants. And, don’t get him wrong, it’s not that those places didn’t do it for him, because they did and they were fun and Dele looks back at those trips fondly, it’s just that they didn’t give him the same feeling that Marseille gives him. Like this love is buried deeper, rooted into his bones and growing with every new day that he wakes up here.

He doesn’t take it for granted, either. How they got the same hotel as before, and how they miraculously even got the same room. In some crazy part of his brain, he can’t help but wonder if Eric made this happen, if he spoke to someone or called the hotel or did  _ something  _ to make sure they got  _ this  _ room. He imagines Eric trying to explain it on the phone in broken French,  _ the one with the creaky A/C and the mini-fridge that hums too loudly.  _ It makes his stomach do those weird little flips whenever he thinks about Eric trying to navigate this, checking the room allocations in advance with Roy.  _ The room with the balcony that overlooks the city, where I put the little white plastic chair out. Room 204.  _

Twenty and four.  _ Like us,  _ Dele had thought the first time he came up to this room. 

And it does weirdly feel like them. The A/C and the mini-fridge have become inside jokes in training now. The dining table is scattered with paper bags from their favourite bakery, Maison de Coeur Blanc, and with fridge magnets that they bought in the tourist shops when out on the beach. There’s the little notes left on bedside tables from when one of them has gone down to breakfast early, usually signed off with a kiss or a haphazard drawing of a ghost - another inside joke about how Dele said he’d haunt Eric if he ever met an untimely death. It’s them, their lives, their friendship - scattered in the most unexpected places across this one hotel room in France. Like a seashell hidden away in a bedside table draw. 

They’ve only been back in room 204 for four days, but already it feels like home again. Already they’re sleeping in whatever bed they happen to be on at the time. Already Dele has made a habit of waking up early to soak up some sun on the balcony before Eric stirs and starts making plans for their day. Already Dele has started taking mental images of the room and everything inside it. 

And maybe that’s why Dele can feel himself falling for Marseille - because it feels so new and exciting, but at the same time it feels just like home. It’s warm croissants and sandy ankles and late night sunsets, all tied together with the smell of sweet suncream and the promise of a successful Euros campaign.  

Marseille is golden sunshine and clear turquoise waters. Marseille is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed bombshell. 

And Dele is in love. 

\--

On the fifth day back in Marseille, it’s Eric who wakes up first. 

Dele is a million miles away, completely lost in a dream that makes absolutely no sense. It’s Christmas and he’s back at home, but he’s at some random house. No, no, not some random house, he’s at  _ Eric’s _ house, only it doesn’t look like Eric’s house because most of Dele’s furniture is there. It’s Christmas morning and Eric is giving him things to hold. Then Jesse is there, and Harry Kane is there with… Kate? Then Eric’s dogs are barking to be let out, but Dele can’t open the door for them because he’s got his arms full of these random objects - hoodies, two matching sun and moon mugs, a selection of stocking fillers. There’s Christmas music playing, and the sound of Eric laughing happily in the doorway, adorned in his ugliest Christmas jumper, and there’s mistletoe and there’s-

There’s someone shaking him. A hand on his shoulder. A familiar voice too close to his ear that says, “Wake up, you little gremlin!”

Dele opens his eyes to find a blurry face hovering in front of his own. He blinks a few times until the fogginess clears and Eric comes into view, beaming from ear to ear and waving his fingers next to his face. “Bonjour, pain au chocolat!”

Dele groans and shoves him away. He was quite enjoying his random Christmas dream and now Eric has ruined it, and he’s also topless, with wet hair dripping water down his bare chest and that white hotel towel sitting loosely on his hips. He’s moving around the room doing God knows what. Dele doesn’t care to ask because there’s far too much light streaming in and now Eric is  _ singing.  _ That Portuguese jingle, again. There’s music too, and as Dele begins to regain his senses he realises the music is coming from the bathroom, probably from Eric’s phone.  _ Showering, singing, naked,  _ Dele’s brain supplies him. He pushes the thought away and tells himself:  _ not necessary.  _

“Go shower, I want to eat,” Eric instructs as he holds up an expensive white t-shirt in one hand and a questionable denim shirt in the other. “Which one?”

Dele sits upright and leans forward enough that Eric won’t be able to see his erection. “When do you  _ not  _ want to eat?” He mumbles. He deliberates for a moment and then points at the white t-shirt. “That one. Who you trying to look nice for?” 

“Training at 11, we need to go soon if we want to go to that little park after the bakery.” 

Eric pulls the white t-shirt over his head and smoothes it out down across his abs. It absorbs the traces of water that had dripped down his chest and stomach, leaving small wet patches, but he doesn’t seem to care much. He tussles his hair with another towel and continues looking at Dele expectantly. 

“What?” Dele says defensively. He realises that he’s been staring at the t-shirt against Eric’s lower stomach. He sighs and tears his eyes away, using his hand to press down on his erection.  _ Not necessary,  _ he thinks again. 

Eric flings his hair towel at him and claps his hands. “Come on, chop chop!” 

The Portuguese jingle is still playing in the background, there’s still sunlight burning across his face, and there’s still the issue of his erection demanding his attention. But really the only thought that runs through Dele’s mind as he listens to Eric’s awful singing and watches him dry his hair in front of the mirror is:  _ I never want this to end.  _

\--

In the morning sunshine of Marseille, on the quiet cobbled roads that lead down to the bakery, Dele sets himself a challenge. It begins when he’s dancing around Eric because Eric is doing something on his phone and not paying Dele any attention, walking too slowly and simply replying  _ hmm?  _ whenever Dele asks him who he’s texting. Dele gets bored of trying to hurry Eric up, even though he’s already insisted that he’s about eight minutes away from  _ actually _ dying of hunger. 

So without Eric’s attention to keep him occupied, he sets himself a challenge. He skips off down the street and attempts to leap the ground between two lamp posts, or the distance of a car. He sets his first marker, and then his second, and he tells himself that if he can clear that distance, he’ll score in his next game. Sometimes he clears it and sometimes he doesn’t, but he keeps going, keeps trying to test how far he can run and jump.  _ If I can jump from this doorstep to the next, I’ll score the winning goal at the Euros. If I can jump from the red car to the blue one, I’ll never get injured in football again. If I can clear the entire distance of this little florist, Eric will kiss me.  _ He takes his biggest running jump yet and flies through the air, trainers thudding against the pavement and skidding a little. He smiles to himself as he looks down at the flower pot he’d set as his marker.  _ Cleared it.  _

“You know if you trip and break your ankle, Roy will actually kill me, right?” Eric shouts down the street. 

Dele spins around, grinning from behind his sunglasses. Eric is thirty or forty feet away from him, hands sunk into the pockets of his faded pink shorts and his royal prince hair hanging over his sunburned forehead. He tuts and shakes his head when Dele shrugs nonchalantly. 

“My ankles are made of elastic,” Dele calls back. 

Eric walks slowly towards him with a lazy, disbelieving smile. Dele waits until Eric has closed the gap, and then falls in step with him. 

“I told myself if I could make the jumps then I would score in our next game,” Dele explains, omitting the other things he told himself. 

He feels the skin on the back of his neck prickle with heat, but it’s not the fact that it’s already 21 degrees outside, it’s because Eric is looking at him with a curious smile, his eyes crinkling in the corners as he lets out a short laugh.

“Doesn’t work like that, Del,” Eric says. “You don’t get to make deals for goals, and you of all people don’t need to be making those deals anyway.”

“I haven’t scored yet,” Dele points out. His brain adds  _ and you haven’t kissed me yet,  _ but he pushes the thought away before he can linger on something so nonsensical and idiotic. 

“You got the Wales goal, Del. Doesn’t matter that it’s not on paper. You and I both know that the assist can be 99% of a goal.” Eric throws his arm around Dele’s shoulder and tugs him to his side. He leans his head a little closer to Dele’s, and without really processing it, Dele reaches up and takes Eric’s hand, lacing his fingers with the ones balancing on his shoulder.

“Sturridge had to give me that 1% though or else it wouldn’t have gone in, you can’t-” 

Eric shakes his head and squeezes Dele’s hand. “Sturridge is 1% of the player you are.” 

Dele swallows around the lump in his throat. They’re about two minutes away from the bakery now, birds singing all around them and cats stretching lazily on warm doorsteps. There’s no one around except for Dele and Eric, walking quietly and enjoying the amiable silence. Dele’s lost in his thoughts about the Wales match and Eric is thinking of, well, whatever it is that Eric Dier thinks of. Probably world issues, or politics, or when his next meal after breakfast will be. 

They arrive at Maison de Coeur Blanc and Dele unhooks himself from beneath Eric’s arm before they step inside to the familiar scent of fresh bread and the sound of the bell clattering above.

“Mes garçons préférés!” Joséphine greets them excitedly. 

There’s nobody else in the bakery because they’ve only just opened, but Alice, Joséphine’s daughter, is, as usual, sitting in the corner of the small seating area. Today she’s wearing a red and white spotted dress, tanned legs stretching out for miles and finishing with pointed red patent heels. She smiles slowly at them, perfect white teeth framed by cherry-painted lips. Dele almost wants to roll his eyes at how convenient it is that she’s waiting here again, one leg crossed over the other, the red patent heel bouncing.

_ Who the hell is wearing heels before 9am?  _ Dele thinks to himself. He looks her up and down and returns the same flirtatious smile.  _ No harm in keeping her interested.  _ She’s definitely not his type, though. 

Eric begins babbling away in French to Joséphine, ordering two croissants and the biggest pain au chocolat she has on display. Joséphine grins at Dele and tells him she saved this one just for him. 

“My favourite part of the day,” Dele tells her gratefully. He slips around the back of Eric and moves along the counter, eyes drinking up all of the desserts that Joséphine has on offer today. “Please, Diet.” Dele whines, stabbing a finger at the huge cream pastry that he’s been asking for for three days in a row.

“You’re not allowed that,” Eric reminds him, for the third day in a row. Joséphine hands the brown paper bag across the counter and Eric holds it up to Dele. “You’re not even technically allowed this.” 

Dele sighs and stares down at the cream pastry. “We could have had a great life together,” he mutters quietly. Eric rolls his eyes half-heartedly and pays up at the till. 

“Big plan for today?” Joséphine asks Eric as she’s sorting through change in her till. 7

Dele looks at Eric and then lets his eyes drift back to the corner of the room. Alice is watching them both carefully. Dele glares at her, but she only seems to find this funny and waggles her fingers at him to say hello. 

“Football,” Eric tells Joséphine. He either hasn’t noticed that Alice is in the corner or he’s purposely ignoring her. Dele steals a glance at her again. She’s already staring back at him, her piercing blue eyes trying to read his mind or something.  

“Always football!” Joséphine exclaims, laughing happily. Her cheeks are as rosy as ever and she’s wearing a large pink apron that reads ‘Baking Mama’.

“Oui,” Eric laughs. “J'aime le football.”  

Dele doesn’t have a clue what Eric is saying, so he leans against the counter and busies himself with gazing down at the cakes again. He can feel Alice’s eyes burning into the side of his head and he doesn’t know whether he should just outright tell her now that he’s not interested. He’s flattered, and all, but he’s really not interested.

“Ready?” Eric asks, his tone softening as he turns to Dele. 

“Yep, I’m ready!” Dele feels a smug smile tug on the corner of his mouth. Eric still hasn’t noticed Alice across the room, even though she’s maybe only ten feet away. She’s clearly looking for attention and Eric and Dele are giving her absolutely-

“Bonjour, Alice,” Eric says brightly, turning to face her. Dele glares at him with an open mouth. 

“Good morning, Diet,” Alice replies in her sickly sweet French accent. Dele feels the rage boiling in his stomach.  _ Only I get to call him that,  _ he thinks possessively. 

“I’m ready,” Dele says again, not as nicely this time. He storms past Eric to the door and holds it open for him, tonguing the inside of his cheek out of annoyance while the bell clatters above them. 

“Au revoir, enjoy the football!” Alice calls out. Eric shoots her a curt nod and then turns to wave goodbye at Joséphine. He steps out of the door and Dele follows him closely behind, checking over his shoulder that Alice hasn’t followed them out. 

“She’s into me,” Dele says quickly, his tone dripping with indignation. “Don’t you think? How she waits there every morning to see me. Just weird, innit?” 

He’s not even convincing himself. He knows full well she’s not into him. It’s Eric whose attention she waits for every morning.

“Like you said, we’re not here to date girls, or get girlfriends, we’re here to play football. And she doesn’t even know who we are, thinks we’re just here to watch it. Just weird, innit? She’s probably old, too. Why is she even at her mum’s bakery every morning, and dressed like that? Did you see her? She was wearing heels.” 

Eric passes the brown paper bag across to Dele. “I saw the heels, yeah.” 

“Who wears heels at this time? Where is she going? Job interview? Well why was she wearing them yesterday as well then? I just think she’s weird. I don’t trust her.” 

Dele digs into the paper bag and retrieves the pain au chocolat. He crams it into his mouth and begins to talk before he’s even finished chewing it. “And the lipstick, the hair. Waiting that long for me every morning. Dunno. Not interested. Probably a right weirdo.” 

“You want to go to the park still?” Eric asks, completely unphased by Dele’s sudden outburst. Dele stops short and blushes, because he knows he must sound so petulant, and now Eric is smiling fondly at him and wiping the chocolate from around his lips with the pad of his thumb. “Play on the swings for a bit before we have to walk back?”

Dele nods and his gaze falls to the floor out of embarrassment. The jealousy had seeped deep into his veins and coursed through his body. Because the girl likes Eric, and not him. And Dele doesn’t like feeling left out or like he’s second choice. He wanted to be Alice’s first choice, even though he would have turned her down.

He looks up at Eric and smiles sheepishly. “Yes, I still want to go to the park.”

“Come on then, pain au chocolat.” Eric brushes away the last few flakes of pastry from around Dele’s mouth and smiles at him. “I’ll push you on the swings.”

Eric sets off back up to the cobbled street and Dele jogs to catch up with him. As he’s walking by Eric’s side, stealing glances at him whenever he thinks Eric won’t notice, it occurs to him that maybe the root of his jealousy isn’t to do with Alice at all. 

“Promise me,” Dele says suddenly. He swallows thickly and tries not to let the concern show on his face. “Promise me that we’ll buy a place here, one day. Just for us. Like for holidays and stuff. Just, like, just promise that we can come back.”

_ Promise me this won’t end,  _ he wants to say.  _ And promise me that if it does, we can get it back. _

Eric bites into his croissant and watches Dele stumble over his words for a moment. 

“I wanna come back here,” Dele continues. He’s not sure why his chest is so tight or why he’s suddenly so self conscious about the way he’s walking, about how close he is to Eric.  _ Should I be this close?  _ Their arms keep brushing but Dele can’t bring himself to move further away. He likes the feeling of Eric’s bicep skimming his own, setting the skin alight in a way he can’t even begin to explain. “I love it here.” 

“I do, too,” Eric says around a mouthful of croissant. He nods affirmatively. “I’d like to come back here.”  

“You have to come with me, though, because of the French. Need you to help me out and stuff in restaurants.” 

“Yeah,” Eric nods. They both know Dele would get by just fine without any French. “I’ll come with you.” 

“A nice house, near the beach, with like a white picket fence and stuff.” Dele walks a little out of line so that his arm brushes Eric’s again.

“White picket fence, yeah.” Eric smiles to himself and places his hand on the small of Dele’s back. “We’ll get a place here, I promise.” 

“I love it here, Eric,” Dele says again. His breath catches in his throat and his heart begins to thump inside his rib cage. “I love- I love it here.”

“You just like the cakes and pastries,” Eric laughs. He turns the corner and they come out in front of the small, empty park surrounded by trees and picnic tables. 

It’s just an old swing set and a slide that gets far too hot in the sun, but Dele loves spending time here, just hanging out on the swings and playing  _ would you rather  _ and laughing at Eric’s wide, shit-eating grin that comes about whenever Dele tries to speak French. He… he just loves it. 

And it’s nothing at all to do with the cakes and pastries. 

\--

Training is the usual practice. Team drills from 11am until 1pm, a break for lunch, then individual training again from 3pm until 6pm. They complete the same passing games, the same spatial awareness games, and the same reaction games that they’ve been doing since the day they arrived. It’s hot and muggy, but Dele wipes the sweat from his brow and pushes through, determined to improve his finishing even if it kills him. 

For most of the day he’s got Jesse lingering by his side, usually asking Dele what he’s doing or throwing longing glances across the pitch at Marcus and saying, as casually as he can, “Hey, do you think Marcus would like, take a bullet for me?”

Dele pauses on the penalty spot and catches his breath. Joe Hart is in front of him, arms stretched wide and waiting for Dele to take his next kick. They’ve been practicing for an hour now, and Jesse was supposed to be practising too, but after his second miss he’d sighed and given up. Now he’s just standing uselessly on the spot and staring off into the distance, distracting Dele with dumb questions like these.

“Dunno,” Dele answers between hot, heavy breaths. He’s scored his last four penalties and wants to smash this one home too, but Joe seems to be filling the entire goal somehow and getting the ball past him is taking more and more effort. He stares at Joe’s feet and tries to work out which way he’s going to dive. 

“You think he’d kill someone for me?” Jesse asks. 

Dele stops and sighs again. “Dunno, Jess,” he says, not bothering to hide the irritation in his voice. “I’m trying to train. Can’t you go bother someone else?”

“What if it was like someone evil though, ya know, like a proper murderer, you think beans would kill him, for me, if I asked him to?” 

“What the fuck are you going on about?” Dele asks, exasperated. He shoots Joe an apologetic look for the delay and shoves Jesse lightly on the shoulder. “Can you please just go away?”

“Eric would for you, easy,” Jesse says confidently. “He’d kill someone for you.”

Dele takes his run up and smashes the ball as hard as he can towards the top right corner. It skims the crossbar and flies into the back of the net well beyond Joe’s reach. Dele grins and punches the air.

“He looking forward to his date?” 

Dele’s smile drops from his face but he isn’t sure why until he registers Jesse’s question again. “What?” He asks, finally turning to give Jesse his full attention. 

“Eric’s date?” Jesse says, like it’s obvious. Dele tries to rack his brain for any shred of information regarding ‘Eric’ and ‘date’. 

“What date?” 

“I thought he had a date? That’s what H said. With some French girl, from the bakery?” 

“Joséphine?” Dele asks, completely bewildered. “She’s like 40 years-” Dele stops short when the painful ringing in his head clears.  _ Oh.  _ He looks across the pitch and finds Eric laughing on the other side with Harry and Kieran. He doesn’t notice Dele watching him.  _ Not Joséphine. _

“I don’t know her name, H just said Eric’s got a date with a bakery girl. She make bread or summin?” Jesse scuffs the grass with the toe of his boot, smiling at his own joke. Joe kicks the ball back over to them but Dele doesn’t see it in time and it hits him forcefully on the hip. 

“Sorry!” Joe yells. Dele lets the ball bounce at his feet, eyes still set on Eric, the way he’s thrown his arm around Kieran’s shoulders, still laughing at something, still carefree.  _ Why didn’t he tell me?  _

“She doesn’t make bread,” Dele spits out. “She doesn’t make anything.” He kicks the ball aggressively back at Joe and sets off towards the training center, leaving Jesse standing awkwardly on the spot.

_ She makes Eric Dier go on a date with her.  _

Dele can’t believe how stupid he’s been. This whole time, this  _ whole time  _ he thought Eric just enjoyed their morning walk to the bakery as much as Dele did. He thought it was about the croissants and the pain au chocolats. He thought it was about the cats they stop to say hello to along the way. He thought it was about the swing set that they sometimes sit on while they eat, or about the long ambling treks across the beach, when their toes sink into wet sand and the gentle, morning waves crash against their ankles. He thought it was about the breeze in their hair, the flakes of pastry around Dele’s mouth.   

But it was about Alice all along. 

Dele reaches the training center and slams the door shut behind him. His studs clatter loudly against the tiled floor but he doesn’t care to take them off, just continues walking towards the dressing room.

It’s empty, so Dele throws himself down on the bench and sulks, arms folded across his chest where his heart beats heavily inside. 

_ Why didn’t he tell me?  _

Harry Kane stumbles into the dressing room five minutes later. He clearly isn’t expecting anyone to be inside so he jumps when he looks up and sees Dele sitting on the bench. He momentarily clutches at his heart and then laughs at off, throwing Dele a questioning look. 

“Tired out already?” He asks lightly. “It’s only 3pm.” 

Dele shrugs. He knows the jealousy is still painted across his face but he doesn’t care. 

“You okay, Del?” 

“I’m great, Harry,” Dele replies bitterly. He doesn’t know what else to do so he bangs the heel of his foot against the floor and sighs. “Jess mentioned that Eric’s got a date tonight.” 

“Alice,” Harry says. Dele looks up at him and barks out a laugh.

“So he’s told you about her?”

Harry sits down next to him on the bench. “He told me he has a date with her, yeah.”  

“He didn’t tell me.” 

“He only mentioned it today in training, I don’t think he set it up until this morning.” Harry sounds almost apologetic, but Dele won’t have any of it. He doesn’t need Harry’s pity or his soft assurances that maybe Eric only set it up this morning. Like that makes any difference, anyway. 

_ Not here to date girls.  _ Isn’t that what Eric had said on the way to the airport?

“I was with him this morning, at the bakery. He didn’t set it up this morning,” Dele says bluntly. He stands up and walks back across the dressing room to the door.

As he idles around the side of the pitch, chewing the inside of his cheek and watching Eric play rondo under the sun with some of the other lads, he sifts through his memories of the day. He pauses at the one of them walking to the bakery, when Dele was clearing the distance of the little florist and Eric was distracted by his phone, texting someone.  _ If I clear the entire distance of this little florist, Eric will kiss me.  _ That’s what Dele had told himself while Eric was texting Alice, arranging their perfect little date.  _ That’s why she wears the heels, the lipstick. _ It all makes sense now. They were never for Dele. And the trips to the bakery? They weren’t for Dele, either. 

It was nothing at all to do with the cakes and pastries.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't usually set a chapter across just one scene like this, but here we are.

Dele is in the worst possible mood. 

It’s barely 7pm and he’s sprawled out across his stomach on Harry’s bed, chewing on some Haribo sweets as he stares blankly at Harry’s laptop screen in front of him. It’s hot and muggy, the air completely still even though Harry’s balcony is wide open. It’s been like this all day. Stagnant. Irritating. Like the world is intent on ruining his life. First there was no fresh apple juice at breakfast, then Dele got put in the losing team three times in a row in training, then his laundry got delivered to the wrong room, and now this - the hot, sticky air that’s making his hair frizzy and his skin itch. 

Dele glances up from the laptop screen and catches sight of Harry standing out on the balcony still, leaning against the railing and holding his phone to his ear. He’s been out there fifteen minutes now, and counting. He’s talking quietly, in soft, hushed tones. Probably to Kate. Probably about something boring like how to fix a broken washing machine or how to grow vegetables. Dele tries listening in for a moment, just in case it’s anything interesting, but he can’t hear anything other than the odd murmur, so he sighs and turns his focus back to the laptop.

He’s watching footage back from the two games they’ve played so far, and really, except for Eric’s goal, it’s all fucking terrible. All he can see as he watches the YouTube videos are missed opportunities, weak passes, and sloppy defending. Honestly, Dele doesn’t know how they’ve even managed to scrape a win and a draw.

He rewinds the Bale free kick and watches for the fifth time as Joe Hart scuffs it, dives all wrong and lets the ball fly into the net without any resistance. A child could have scored that goal.

“Stop watching that,” Harry tells him as he walks back into the room from the balcony, eyeing up the laptop and clearly noting the foul mood still painted across Dele’s face.

“Should have put me in goal,” Dele mumbles, resting his chin down on his arms and sulking. He stabs the arrow key on Harry’s laptop to rewind the video one more time. _I would have saved that easily,_ he wants to add, but he doesn’t because Harry is already sighing at him in annoyance. He walks over and shuts the lid of the laptop, almost trapping Dele’s fingers in the process. 

“Stop watching it, Del,” Harry says, firmer this time. Dele rolls his eyes because he knows Harry is about to give him one of his ‘positive team mentality’ lectures. He’s heard it all before - be a team player, Del, learn from your mistakes, only look forward, etc etc. Harry gives him the same old spiel every time he catches Dele pouring over match footage and working himself up over it.

Thankfully, Harry spares him the speech this time. Instead he just takes the laptop from the bed and places it out of reach on the chest of drawers. He takes the half empty bag of Haribo too, which Dele makes a point of tutting at. “You bought them for me,” he points out. Harry raises an eyebrow at him. 

“I said you could have a _couple._ ”

Harry’s dressed head to toe in England gear. Grey England shorts, white England t-shirt. His blonde hair is flopping in his face and his cheeks are rosy from the hot, humid air. He really is going to be England’s star boy one day.

“What were you talking to Kate about?” 

“She wanted to know how to fix the boiler.” 

Dele laughs under his breath. _I knew it,_ he thinks, but he holds his tongue and checks his phone instead. No new messages and no new notifications. Not only has Eric not replied to his text yet, he’s also not replied to Dele’s fourteen Snapchats, his three WhatsApps, or his Draw Something request. He hasn’t even viewed Dele’s story yet of the view from Harry’s balcony, and he specifically only put that up to see how quickly Eric would view it. 

Somewhere in Dele’s peripheral vision, Harry picks up his PS4 remote and holds it out to him. “Want to play some Fifa?”

Dele throws his phone down onto the bed. He uploaded that story almost _twenty five_ minutes ago. Eric can preach all he likes about how social media is destroying brain cells (specifically _Dele’s_ brain cells), but he’s on his phone as much as the next guy. But not tonight, because tonight, Eric is busy.

“Del?” Harry prompts. He shakes the remote suggestively until Dele bats it away and rolls over onto his back, covering his face with his hands and sighing. “ _No!_ ” he groans loudly into his palm.

“Have you heard from Eric?” Harry asks casually. He sits down on the edge of his bed with his back to Dele and begins scrolling through his phone. 

 _Shut up about Eric,_ Dele thinks, even though it’s the first time Harry has brought him up. He keeps his hands over his face and presses his fingertips into his eyelids, dusting his vision with little blurry stars. 

“Is he enjoying his date?” 

_Shut up shut up shut up._

Dele pulls his hands away from his face and slaps them down on the bed either side of him in frustration. “I don’t know, no, haven’t heard from him,” he huffs. He’s in a terrible, terrible mood, and the last thing he wants to talk about is Eric Dier’s date.

Eric’s been out on his stupid date for 42 minutes so far and Dele has already convinced himself that he’s never coming back. That’s he’s probably going to marry Alice, have loads of beautiful blonde kids with her. They’ll all speak French. They’ll all eat croissants and pain au chocolats. They’ll be wonderful and they’ll grow up to be footballers and probably score more goals than Dele does.

“Is this why you’re in a bad mood? Because Eric has gone out without you?” Harry turns to shoot Dele an amused smirk over his shoulder. Dele rolls his eyes and presses his foot into Harry’s lower back in a half-assed attempt to push him off the bed. 

“I couldn’t care less,” Dele insists, unconvincingly, like he hasn’t spent the last 42 minutes in Harry’s bedroom wallowing in his own jealousy. 

“Sounds like it,” Harry mumbles. 

Dele ungracefully kicks him in the back again. “Shut up, H. Make me a tea,” he demands, even though the last tea that Harry made him is still sitting cold and untouched on the desk. “And get me biscuits, this time.” 

“You’re a terrible house guest, you know that?” Harry chides. He sticks his hand behind his back and grabs Dele’s foot, shoving it away lightly. “Stop kicking me.”

“I’m bored,” Dele whines. “And I’m not a terrible house guest. You love me.” 

“Then let's play Fifa,” Harry offers, gesturing back at the TV. Dele groans again. 

“ _No_ , I don’t want to. I don’t want to do anything. I just want to feel…” Dele hesitates, his brain tells him _not sad_. He wants to feel not sad. “Not bored,” he finishes meekly. He’s bored and irritated and yes, he didn’t drink the last tea that Harry made him, but that’s because Harry only put one sugar in it instead of two. Eric always puts two sugars in, and he stirs it three times clockwise and three times counter-clockwise because he said that’s what makes it taste so good. Harry doesn’t know about the stirring ritual, or the extra teaspoon of sugar. He hasn’t made it the way Eric makes it, so Dele doesn’t want it.

Feeling like the terrible house guest that he knows he is, Dele sits up and goes to crawl off of Harry’s bed. He figures he’ll retreat to his own room for a while and go on Tinder, maybe see if there are any girls in the area who want to go on a date- 

Dele’s thoughts are brought to a halt when he feels Harry’s fingers suddenly wrap around his wrist, stopping him in his tracks.

“You know you won’t lose him, right? No matter what happens.”

Dele doesn’t know what to say, so he just stares at Harry blankly. His throat feels too constricted, his chest too tight. Harry’s being all serious. He’s making this into a big deal when it really isn’t. Dele doesn’t care that Eric is on a date, that he’s going to marry Alice and have beautiful blonde babies. He doesn’t care that they’re probably kissing right now, and that all of this has come about because Dele loved the bakery so much that he made Eric take him every day. He practically set them up, arranged their date. He doesn’t care. He feels sick, but he doesn’t care.  

“You’ll always be his best friend,” Harry adds, his tone measured and calm. 

There’s something about the way he says it that makes Dele’s stomach turn. 

Harry’s small, sympathetic smile falters and he looks at Dele with concern in his eyes. He stands up, placing a hand on Dele’s shoulder to steady him. “Are you okay, Del?”

Dele stumbles back a little and blinks, trying to organise his thoughts. _One day he’ll get married and leave you. He’ll have a family, and they’ll be his priority. He could leave Spurs, leave England, even. He could move away. Maybe you’ll see him at Christmas. Maybe never at all. You’ll stay friends but it won’t be the same. He’ll make new a new best friend. He’ll call someone else pain au chocolat. He’ll buy a place in Marseille, like he promised, but it won’t be with you._

“I have to go,” Dele chokes out. “Thanks for… the company, tea, and stuff.” He turns on his heel and puts one foot in front of the other until he’s in the corridor. He passes Raheem’s room, then Vardy’s, then John and Kyle’s. He counts down the numbers, _207, 206, 205…_

_204. Like us._

Dele pushes the door open and takes a deep breath when it slams shut behind him. He presses his back against it and closes his eyes, letting the familiar scent of their room wash over him and calm him for a minute. In his head, Eric is already gone. He’s brought a place in Marseille with Alice and they’re raising their three children together. But when Dele opens his eyes and sees the creaky A/C, sees Eric’s grey jumper folded neatly on the end of his bed, his aftershave on the chest of drawers, his dirty socks discarded on the bathroom floor - that’s when the images of the three blonde children fade away and reality comes barrelling back. 

Dele almost wants to laugh at himself for how stupid he’s being. 

He pushes himself off of the door and walks into the room, checking his hair in the mirror along the way. _Deep breath._ Everything is fine. _He’s still mine._ He ambles over to the window and figures he’ll call his brother or something. It’s only 7:30pm, so he’s still got a few hours to kill before Eric gets home. _Gets back_ , his brain corrects. Yeah, he’ll talk to Harry, maybe even set his PS4 up, text H and see if he wants to play that game of Fifa after all. 

Somehow, Dele doesn’t quite make it to the window. He finds himself standing at the end of Eric’s bed, looking down curiously at the neatly folded grey jumper. It feels like bait, and he knows he should leave it well alone. It would be weird to smell it. It would be weird to pick it up and press it to his face and inhale the scent of Eric’s fabric conditioner. _And yet..._

Dele’s hand shoots through the air, snatching the grey jumper from its resting place. He brings it quickly to his face and inhales it, letting the comforting scent fill his lungs and chest. It’s Eric’s house, his bedsheets and his towels and the cushions on his sofa. It’s the nights Dele has crashed in Eric’s spare room because he couldn’t be bothered to order a cab. It’s the nights they’ve got drunk together in Eric’s back garden, challenging each other to stupid basketball games. It’s-

“Hey, Del.”

Dele startles and drops the jumper at his feet. 

 _Fuck fuck fuck!_ His mouth hangs open and he’s frozen to the spot as he desperately tries to process what has just happened, why Eric is back, and why he’s walking into the room with that dumb, shit-eating grin on his face. How the fuck did Dele not hear him come in? He actually wants to curl up and die of embarrassment, because there’s no way Eric didn’t see him sniffing his jumper just now. 

“I-” Dele stumbles. He looks down at the jumper at his feet and kicks it under the bed for lack of any better ideas. Eric pauses in front of him and frowns, lines creasing his forehead. 

“Did you just you just kick my jumper under the bed?” He asks, huffing a small, disbelieving laugh at the end of his question. He takes a few more steps forward until he’s only half a meter away from Dele. Dele doesn’t know what’s happening and his brain completely shuts down at the idea that Eric might be about to like... _kiss him_? But he doesn’t - of course he doesn’t, because that would be ridiculous. Instead, he bends down to retrieve the jumper that Dele had attempted to nudge out of view. 

Dele could really actually die of embarrassment right now. 

“Why are you back?” Dele blurts out defensively. He watches Eric hold up the jumper, making a scene of inspecting it for dirt, and then snatches it out of his hands before anything more can be said about it. He folds it hastily and places it back on the end of Eric’s bed. “Why are you back?” He asks again. He runs his hands through his hair and tries _not_ to look like a deer caught in the headlights. He knows he’s bright red, and his voice is coming out all high pitched and horrible, and now Eric is grinning like this is the funniest thing in the world to him. 

“Did you really miss me that much?” Eric asks, raising his eyebrows. 

“I- what? No, I’m just. Why are you back?” Dele nudges the carpet with the toe of his sock. He can’t bring himself to make eye contact with Eric so he just stares down at the floor. There are too many stupid thoughts running through his brain. The cold tea sitting in Harry’s room, the grey jumper on the end of Eric’s bed, the broken boiler that Kate is probably trying to fix right now. _I thought you were going to kiss me._  

“Dele are you-” 

“I just like your fabric conditioner,” Dele interrupts clumsily. He somehow manages to sound much more confident than he feels inside, so he folds his arms across his chest and stands up straight, finally meeting Eric’s questioning gaze. “I like- it smells nice. And I like it. That’s why I was smelling your jumper. I’ll probably buy some.”

Eric looks at him carefully. The corner of his mouth twitches into a slight smile. He stands up straight too, matching Dele’s posture, and then folds his arms across his chest. “You’ll probably buy some,” he repeats. His eyes and his tone are equally skeptical, but there’s something warm about the way he blinks at Dele and ever so slightly lifts his eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Dele says quickly. He does his best to keep his expression stoic and serious. “If I see some. In a shop, or in… the laundromat.”

“In the laundromat?” Eric laughs. 

“Wherever you buy fabric conditioner from, yeah,” Dele argues. He tightens his arms across his chest and swallows around the lump in his throat. Eric’s all dressed up still, but he hasn’t even been gone an hour. He’s wearing that nice black shirt that actually fits him and the grey skinny jeans and white trainers. He looks nice, but he hasn’t even been gone an hour, meaning something must have happened. Maybe he got the wrong date, or there was an emergency, or he needed to come back to get condoms or something. _How embarrassing,_ Dele thinks to himself, _Eric’s come back to get condoms and walked in on me sniffing his clothes._

“Well, you don’t need to get some. Your clothes already smell nice,” Eric concludes with an easy smile and a shrug of his shoulders. He sits down on the end of Dele’s bed and begins untying his shoe laces. 

“What are you doing?” Dele asks. His voice softens a little and he drops his arms to his sides. “Why are you back?” 

Eric looks up at him and shrugs. He’s still got a gentle, carefree smile on his face, which is why it makes absolutely no sense at all when he says, “I just didn’t like her.” 

Dele stares at him in disbelief. “What do you mean you didn’t like her?” 

“We don’t have anything in common. I don’t know, Del. It just didn’t feel right,” Eric answers, far too nonchalant. “It’s fine though, she didn’t feel it either.” 

“So… you don’t fancy her?” Dele asks. He sits down on the bed next to Eric and stares at the side of his face while Eric focuses on his shoelaces. “Are you not going to marry her?” 

“Not really,” Eric laughs. “And no, I’m definitely not going to marry her.”

“It was a bad date?” Dele asks, still somewhat disbelieving. _How can anyone have a bad date with Eric?_ He’s the ultimate gentleman. It just doesn't happen. 

“Not bad, just… not good. Nothing there, really.” Eric slips off his trainers and finally turns to Dele. The soft golden light of the room turns his hair to sunshine, his eyes an ocean blue. His cheeks are rosy and flushed. He’s got nice teeth and nice hands and a nice voice. It’s stupid, really, how he does that. Just sits on the bed, looking at Dele while a comfortable silence settles in the few inches between them. 

He moves ever so slightly so that his knee is touching Dele’s, and it happens again, the nonsensical thoughts that turn Dele’s brain into mush. Cold tea, grey jumper, boiler. Kissing me. _Kissing me._ The dressing room, Eric on his knees, the goal, Eric’s body pressed flush against his own, the hotel room in Lens, the seashell. _Then haunt me._

Dele can’t remember how to breathe properly. 

“You want to do something?” Eric voice breaks through the chaotic rambling of Dele’s brain. There’s a hand on Dele’s thigh. When he looks down, he finds that it’s Eric’s. Eric has his hand on his thigh, and he’s ducking his head and peering at Dele from beneath his long lashes. Dele doesn’t usually see them this close up, but they’re nice. Eric’s eyes are nice. His whole face is nice, in fact. “Del?”

“Huh?” Dele breathes. 

“I said did you want to do something?” 

 _Kiss you,_ Dele thinks. He immediately pushes that thought a million miles away and shakes himself out of his daze. _Moment of madness,_ he reasons. Definitely not a thought to linger on. 

“Yeah,” Dele says, still half out of it, then he blinks and inhales and smiles. He’s got an idea. The best idea he’s ever had in his life. “Let’s go on a date.” 

“What?” Eric laughs. His hand is still on Dele’s thigh. That thought is still in Dele’s head. Nothing makes any sense at all, but he figures that if Eric has had a bad date, then maybe Dele should give him a good one. 

“A friend date, me and you. I’ll take you on a date,” Dele enthuses. 

Eric takes a moment to register the idea, but then he shrugs and laughs and says, “Okay, Delboy, you can take me on a date.”

It’s not a real date, obviously, but Eric has come back from his _real_ date after 45 minutes because he said there was nothing there, and for some reason that fills Dele with sheer delight. Not only is he _not_ going to lose Eric to Alice, but he’s now going to one up her. He’s going to take Eric on the best date of his life. 

“Let’s go then,” Dele beams. 

_In your pretty fucking French face, Alice._


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's date night! 💕

As Dele leans against the window in the hotel room and stares up at the twinkling stars, he decides that Marseille might be even prettier in the evenings than it is in the day time. 

“How many stars even _are_ there in space?” Dele asks with a heavy sigh. Sometimes he stops and thinks about how big space actually is, and how there are _so_ many planets and _so_ many stars and _so_ many things that Dele doesn’t understand, like black holes and supernovas and alternative universes. It hits him sometimes - just how small and insignificant his life really is, in the grand scheme of things.  

He’s perched himself up on the windowsill, knees tucked in to his chest, head leant against the cool glass of the window. He stares up into the sky whilst Eric gets ready around him, sometimes answering Dele’s questions, sometimes not. 

“Nobody knows,” Eric replies. He’s searching through the wardrobe for his grey jumper so Dele can’t actually see him. His voice rings out from behind the wardrobe door. “Infinite.” 

“That’s not possible.” Dele sighs. He breathes onto the cool glass to fog it up before drawing out ‘204’ with his finger. “There’s probably like, three thousand.”

In the space of ten minutes, Eric manages to iron his clothes, change the shoelaces in his trainers, find his ‘better’ aftershave, brush his teeth, _and_ tidy up the hotel room after himself. Every now and then, Dele interrupts him to ask, _what star is that?_ , and sometimes Eric replies with a name that Dele instantly forgets, like Archenar or Vega or Canopus, but one time he smiles and walks over to Dele, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, and he says, “I told you about that one already. That one’s Andromadele.” 

Dele rolls his eyes and shoves him away lightly. “You’re so lame,” he huffs. 

He watches Eric disappear into the bathroom and then turns back to the view, swallowing around the growing lump in his throat. The one that reminds him that despite this being a _friend_ date, and despite this all just being silly and their usual brand of banter, Dele has been getting these loaded pangs in his chest that keep him up at night. And he’s been getting these moments where his fingers twitch when Eric’s hand is near his. And he’s been getting breathless whenever Eric walks out of the shower in just a loose towel. It’s been happening more and more, and now it’s just happened again. He can’t talk because his throat is too tight. _Andromadele. Pain au chocolat._ Every time Eric bestows one of those nicknames on him, Dele feels like his chest isn’t big enough for his heart anymore.

But there’s absolutely no way he’s going to acknowledge that, or think about that, or even begin to take any of those dumb reactions seriously. So instead, he lightly shoves Eric away and tells him to hurry up, tells him if he’s not ready in fifteen minutes, the date is cancelled. 

He doesn’t mean it, obviously, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Eric’s steps out of the bathroom six minutes later in a thin grey jumper and black jeans. He’s put wax in his hair and brushed it to one side, and he’s got this boyish grin on his face that Dele can’t help but grin back at. It suddenly strikes him that Eric has put more effort into getting ready for this date than he did for the one with Alice. 

“Ready to go?” Eric asks happily. Dele jumps down from the windowsill and quickly checks his hair in the mirror, as if he didn’t already do that twice when Eric was in the shower. 

“I hope you’re ready for the best date of your life,” Dele says, only half-serious. Or maybe he is serious? Well, _not_ serious because it’s a friend date, but serious about it being the best. The best friend date Eric has ever had. 

“With you? Always, Delboy,” Eric says with a wink. It’s just a joke, obviously, but Dele still gets one of those pangs in his chest, especially because Eric holds the door open for him and playfully slaps his ass on the way out. 

\--

They jump into a taxi down to the coast and Dele puts down both of the back windows, letting the wind carry in the salty air from the ocean, cool and damp and holding promises of a late night walk on the sand. He’s already told the driver where to drop them off, but Eric still has no idea. He’s in the dark about what Dele is planning on doing tonight, even though he keeps prodding Dele in the thigh and asking for clues. 

“Are we going to the beach?” Eric asks. He rests his hand on Dele’s thigh for a moment and Dele looks down at it, smiles even though he’s trying to play it cool. 

“Yes, we’re getting dropped off there,” Dele answers. 

“Are we going anywhere else after?” Eric continues. His hand is still there, warm and heavy and demanding all of Dele’s attention. For a brief second, Dele pictures the hand trailing higher up his thigh. He pictures Eric groping him in the back of the taxi. He pictures himself gasping, but not moving away-

“Del?” 

Dele pulls his eyes away from Eric’s hand and looks at Eric, blinking. “Huh?” 

“Are we going anywhere else? After the beach?” 

“Yes,” Dele says quickly, breathlessly. He looks out of the window and keeps his mouth pressed shut. The stupid pangs, the _ache_ in his chest, the butterflies in this stomach - they all hit him at once. But he won’t say it, won’t even let himself _think_ it. 

 _It’s just because he’s your best friend,_ he tells himself. _Stop being an idiot._

Eric moves his hand away and Dele chews the inside of his mouth. He turns back to Eric and smiles at him. “I’m not telling you where though, it’s a surprise.”

“How have you already thought of somewhere to go? Did you have this planned all along?” Eric asks, flicking Dele’s thigh again. Dele laughs sarcastically and makes a face.

“Yes, Diet, I planned for you to have a terrible date with Alice so that I could take you on a better date and have you fall in love with me instead.” 

The soft light of the passing street lamps dance across Eric’s features. For a moment, they both fall silent. Dele can’t quite make out the expression on Eric’s face and he immediately regrets ever opening his mouth, ever stepping into this taxi, ever planning this friend date, ever even meeting Eric Dier. 

His breath catches again. They both pause, listening to the gentle wind swell through the open windows. Dele knows that space is huge and it has probably _billions_ of stars, maybe even infinite. But right now, nothing feels bigger than this moment. His world begins and ends in the distance between where he’s sitting and where Eric is sitting. Quiet, contemplating.

They’re both thinking the same thing. They’re both wondering if Dele is being serious. 

Just when Eric is about to open his mouth to speak, the taxi driver flicks on a light at the front of the cab and pulls over to the side of the road. 

“We are here,” he says. Dele and Eric both stare at him, and then turn back to each other. 

“I’ll pay-”

“I was just joking-” 

They both stop, gesture for the other to continue. Dele knows he must be blushing because Eric is smiling at him sympathetically. 

“I was going to say that I’ll pay for the cab,” Eric says. Dele nods and swallows down the anxiety building in his throat, restricting his vocal chords. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands so he fiddles with a piece of loose thread on the pocket of his jeans. “Del, I know you were joking, you don’t need to clarify that.” 

“Yeah,” Dele laughs. “I know. It’s cool. I- you can pay for the taxi.”

“I have to pay for my own date now?” Eric laughs, cocking an eyebrow. He turns to the driver and hands over a few folded notes. “Alice didn’t make me pay for the taxi…” 

Dele glares at him and shoves him, but Eric catches his hand and pulls him closer. “Don’t fight me, Delboy, you know I’ll win.” 

“I’m stronger than you,” Dele declares. To prove it, he leans across Eric’s chest and opens the taxi door before pushing on Eric’s shoulders, forcing him out of the car. Eric grabs his hand again and pulls Dele out with him. 

They both stumble out of the taxi laughing at each other, and just like that, the tension disperses. Eric wraps an arm around Dele’s shoulders and they set off down the seafront together. 

It’s just as magical as always. Stars dot the night sky like fairy lights while the aromas of nearby French restaurants drift into the air. There’s French chatter and English chatter and everyone they pass is dressed to the nines, because it’s Saturday night and it’s 25 degrees and they’re in Marseille _._

Eric keeps his arm hooked around the back of Dele’s shoulders. They’re still arguing about who’s stronger, but it isn’t serious because they both know that Eric is by far the stronger one. Still, Dele likes the boyish arguments. He likes digging his elbow into Eric’s ribs and making Eric say nice things like _okay, fine, you_ are _stronger than you look._

They walk further down the seafront and bicker playfully until they find a deserted area of the beach.

That’s when Dele darts out of Eric’s grasp and runs out onto the soft, settled sand. Eric quickly follows, and they both half run, half peel off shoes and socks. Dele reaches the water first but Eric is close behind him. 

They splash around in the shallows beneath the stars, jeans rolled as high as they can go up their calves, giggles piercing the warm night air. After a few minutes have passed, Dele feels a little daring and decides to kick the cold water up at Eric. He expects Eric to whine about it, but he doesn’t, he just chases Dele through the water and grabs hold of his shoulders, threatens to dunk him under and ruin his precious hair. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Dele squeals gleefully. He grabs hold of Eric’s arm and presses himself against Eric’s chest until Eric rubs his back and reluctantly grants him mercy. They both freeze where they are, standing in the shallows and clinging on to one another for no particular reason. Everything is quiet except for the sound of waves breaking against the shore and the distant chatter of a city coming to life. 

When they break apart, Dele can’t bring himself to meet Eric’s gaze. He looks down at Eric’s chest instead and the memory of Eric’s statement continues to echo in his brain. _I know you were joking. You don’t need to clarify that._

“Well, we’re all wet now,” Eric sighs, pulling Dele from his thoughts. Dele looks down at the waves washing around their ankles and shrugs. There’s something coiling in his stomach and he isn’t quite sure what. He’s still holding on to Eric’s arm. _Let go,_ he tells himself. But he can’t.

 _I know you were joking. You don’t need to clarify that._ He can feel the ghost of Eric’s hand on his thigh again.

All those things that Dele doesn’t understand. Like black holes and supernovas and alternative universes, and like why he _can’t just let go of Eric’s arm_ , or meet his gaze right now - some of those things are becoming a little clearer. Because somewhere out in space with its infinite stars, Dele thinks there might just be an alternative universe in which he _isn’t_ joking. 

And that scares him more than any black hole or supernova ever could. 

\--

“It’s called Bar Madeline,” Dele says, holding his phone up to the street they’re both facing. He’s using Google Maps but he’s utterly lost right now.

“Didn’t we come up this way?” Eric asks sceptically. He frowns as he looks down the road Dele is saying they need to walk up. “We definitely walked this way earlier, Del.”

“It’s got glow in the dark golf!” Dele enthuses. Eric looks confused for a second, and even Dele doesn’t know why he just blurted that out, but then Eric’s expression lights up and he smiles, wide and happy.

“I love golf!” He declares. “Especially glow in the dark golf.”

“And cool mocktails and stuff. It looks sick in the photos,” Dele continues. “It’s all really dark inside, the glasses are glow in the dark, and you can write on the walls with neon pens.” 

“Let’s find it, then! I want to write ‘Dele sucks at Call of Duty’ on every wall.” 

Dele rolls his eyes and hands his phone over to Eric. “I’m better than you at everything you’ve ever done. Can you lead the way, I don’t know which way north is.” 

“Clearly not better at navigating,” Eric mutters. He takes Dele’s phone regardless and sets off up the street that Dele had said to go up _anyway._ It takes all of Dele’s willpower _not_ to point that out and make a scene about it. 

As he jogs to catch up, Dele scratches the back of Eric’s neck and looks at him expectantly. “What are you really going to write on the wall? Don’t write that I suck at Call of Duty.” 

Eric chuckles. “I’m not going to write that. I’ll write your song, if you want.”

“What song?” Dele asks quickly. They have a lot of songs, him and Eric, and he desperately wants to know which one he’s thinking of, which song Eric associates with Dele the most.  

“Your song?” Eric says again, like it’s obvious. “Only cost five mil?” 

 _Oh, of course._ Dele presses his mouth into a thin line and smiles politely. 

“Oh, yeah. I might write yours too,” Dele says without really thinking. He’s just trying to fill the silence, trying to cover up his disappointment that Eric was referring to _Dele’s_ song rather than _their_ song.

Eric shoots him a warm smile and they continue walking up the cobbled pavement.

It’s only when they get to the top of the street that Dele suddenly laughs at himself under his breath. He pictures taking one of the neon pens and scribbling on the wall: _I love Eric Dier and Eric Dier loves me._

He’s still imagining it when Eric suddenly stops in the middle of the street and chews on his bottom lip. Dele stops and turns on his heel.

“You’ve taken us the wrong way, haven’t you?” He accuses half-heartedly. 

Eric shakes his head. “No, I took us the right way, but look.” He points across the street, and there it is: Bar Madeline. Doors and windows boarded up, lights out, a ‘for sale’ sign hanging limply on the door. 

Dele stands and stares at it. _Fuck._

“I don’t have a back-up plan,” Dele says quietly. He can his chest tightening again. He’s angry, and upset, and annoyed at himself for not coming up with a back-up plan. This was supposed to be the best date of Eric’s life - it was supposed to have glow in the dark golf and sugary mocktails and they were supposed to write their names on the walls with neon pens. And now it’s nothing, because Bar Madeline is closed and everything fucking sucks. 

“Hey!” Eric calls out when Dele walks off up the street away from him. He’s too angry and too disappointed to face the fact that the date is ruined. It’s over, done. 

Eric grabs his wrist and spins him around. “Where are you going?” He asks, clearly amused. “Del, get that look off your face. I know what you’re thinking.” 

“No you don’t,” Dele says moodily. 

“You think you ruined the date because the bar is closed,” Eric says. Dele visibly deflates and shrugs. Eric’s in his nice grey jumper, his white shirt, and his jeans - which are still a little wet from their walk in the sea. He’s got his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, shirt collar loose and unbuttoned. He made an actual effort for this, and Dele hasn’t been able to deliver the date that was promised. “You didn’t ruin it, okay? We’ll just find something else to do.”

Dele still doesn’t say anything. He’s not convinced, so he just stares at the ground, bottom lip pushed out childishly. 

“Del,” Eric says softly. “ _Pain au chocolat_.” He presses his fingers a little tighter around Dele’s wrist and the tip of his index finger lines up perfectly with Dele’s pulse point. They both look down at it and wait with bated breath. 

“Remember this?” Eric asks quietly. It’s something they used to do when they first met. They’d been fooling around in training one day and Dele had pressed his fingers to Eric’s wrist. That was how they discovered that if they held it there long enough, their pulses would eventually fall into sync.

“Yeah, I remember,” Dele smiles sheepishly. He feels Eric’s pulse against his own, and sure enough, within seconds it feels like they’re in sync with each other.

“We’ll find something else to do, Del.” 

“Okay,” Dele nods. He lets his wrist fall out of Eric’s grasp and looks around, buoyed by a new determination to still make this date night work. There’s not much down the street except for a couple of quiet bars and what looks like a rather dated French cinema. 

_That could work._

Dele marches up the street to check it out and Eric follows, waiting to see what Dele is thinking, what his plan is. 

The cinema is old and small and they’ve only got three movies listed outside. Two are French and one is American, but subtitled. 

For lack of any other ideas, Dele turns and grins at Eric in front of Cinéma de Marseille. “Want to watch a movie?”

Eric nods emphatically. “Definitely. All good dates have a movie, right?” 

“Yes, they do,” Dele agrees. He wraps his fingers around Eric’s wrist and drags him across the road. They fumble their way through buying two tickets at the box office - mostly thanks to Eric’s ability to speak broken French - and then skip inside the dusky cinema and head straight to the pick and mix stand. 

“Oh, Del,” Eric says hesitantly, his expression already folding into disapproval. “That stuff looks like it’s been here for years. I can’t let you eat any of that.” 

Dele rolls his eyes and picks up a bag. Eric’s right, it _does_ look a bit old and discoloured, but it’s just sweets at the end of the day, so really, how bad can gone off sugar actually be? He fills his bag halfway and takes it over to the cashier, who’s sitting behind the till on his phone. He rings up Dele’s pick and mix and Eric adds on a large diet coke and an _extra large_ box of nachos, plus two medium boxes of sweet popcorn. 

“Don’t tell Roy,” Eric says with a wink when Dele pretends to look shocked. 

They take their popcorn and their nachos and their pick and mix up to theatre three. The room is small and stuffy, with heavy red velvet curtains lining every wall and dimly-lit lights that flicker and buzz every few minutes. Nobody else is in there, so Dele and Eric head straight to the back seats. 

“What are we even watching?” Eric asks as he settles into his dusty velvet seat and kicks off his trainers. 

“Er, a film called Hush, I think?” Dele says. He sits next to Eric and places his armful of snacks down on the floor in front of them. “Don’t kick these over, Diet. Hey, Eric, can you just watch where you’re kicking your big monster legs please. _Eric!”_

“Yes, I heard you!” Eric sighs. He pulls Dele back by his shoulder. “Sit back, I can’t see.”

“You _can_ see, and the film hasn’t started yet anyway.” 

“Stop complaining,” Eric mutters. 

Dele stares at him in disbelief. “ _You’re_ the one complaining!” He tuts and shakes his head. “I really can’t believe you sometimes, Eric Dier.”

“I want popcorn,” Eric sighs. “Anyway, what is this movie? Do we know anything about it.” 

“We just know it’s American but it’s got French subtitles.”

“What if it’s scary? You don’t like scary films do you? You’re a wimp.” 

“It’s not a scary film, and I’m not a wimp,” Dele insists. He’s getting a little sick of the backchat, if he’s being honest. “Can you stop being mean, please? I’m not a wimp, I just want you to stop being mean. We’re here to have a nice time.” 

Eric laughs and buries his face against Dele’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, pain au chocolat. I love you really. And you’re not a wimp.” 

Dele shrugs him off and hums disapprovingly. Eric grabs the bag of pick and mix from Dele’s lap and digs around in it until he finds what he’s looking for. He fishes out a gummy love heart and holds it up in front of Dele’s face.

Dele stares at it and feels his entire body tense up. He doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, doesn’t say anything. _Am I supposed to eat it?_ He thinks. Eric is holding the sweet only a couple of inches from his mouth, like an offering. Dele doesn’t know if he’s supposed to take it from him or lean forward and eat it from his hand. There’s too much buzzing in his brain and he can’t think straight. _Heart. Eric’s hands. Mouth. I love you really._

_You didn’t need to clarify that._

Dele’s fingers tremble in his lap as he slowly leans forward and closes his mouth around the gummy sweet. Eric’s fingers brush against Dele’s lips and neither of them seem to understand why this is happening. Eric looks just as confused as Dele feels, so he lets go of the gummy heart and Dele quickly chews it and swallows it. 

Neither of them say a word about the gummy heart or what just happened, but they don’t need to. The lights dim and the room falls to complete darkness.

“Er-” 

“What is happening?” Dele asks frantically.

“It’s fine, Del, I think the movie is just starting.”

The curtains slide back to reveal the screen and after a few stutters and a flicker of light, it boots into action. 

“I still don’t know what this movie is about,” Dele mutters. “I hope it isn’t actually scary.” 

“You can hold my hand if you want,” Eric offers. Dele can practically hear him smirking. He shoots a glare at the side of Eric’s face.

“Shut up, no, I don’t want to hold your hand.” 

“I’m just saying that you can if you need to,” Eric says. He keeps his eyes on the screen and shovels another handful of popcorn into his mouth. Dele watches the way he chews, the way he’s already putting more popcorn in his mouth before he’s even swallowed the first lot. He watches the way Eric licks the sugar from his lips afterwards, first the lower lip, and then the top. 

 _Stop it,_ Dele tells himself. He pulls his gaze away from Eric’s mouth and forces himself to watch the trailers instead, even though they’re all in French. 

There’s a movie about some French woman taking down her rival’s law firm, and then there’s one about a family moving to Switzerland and living in the mountains, and then there’s a black and white one where a woman falls in love with her best friend. One of the scenes in the trailer shows them kissing on a beach, their ankles submerged in the shallows and their lips moving against each other. Dele feels another sickening pang in his chest and he has to squeeze his eyes shut to block out the invasive, ridiculous thoughts that come rattling through his head again.  

_Stop it, stop it, stop it!_

After a few more trailers, the movie finally begins and Dele is able to settle down and relax again. He shares his pick and mix with Eric and they both sink into their seats and kick their feet up onto the chairs in front. 

“This better be good, Delboy.” 

Within five minutes of the movie starting, Dele knows he’s made a _terrible_ mistake. The film is, in fact, a scary one. 

“I don’t like this,” Dele mutters as he pulls his knees up to his chest. “Eric, I don’t like this at all.” He buries his face into his knees and holds them close while the scene plays out on the big screen. A home invasion. A man who wants to murder and torture and probably do all sorts of horrible things that Dele doesn’t even want to imagine. The victim in the movie is deaf, so there isn’t actually any talking and the sound is often muted. Somehow, that only serves to make Dele even more anxious and nervous about watching. 

“Are you okay?” Eric voice whispers. 

Dele looks up from behind his knees and nods sheepishly. He’s determined not to be a _complete_ wimp, so he puts on a brave face and makes a point of watching the movie whenever Eric looks across to check on him. 

“Do you want to hold my hand?” Eric asks. He doesn’t sound as smug as he did the first time he asked, and for a moment Dele actually considers saying yes. But then he comes to his senses and realises he can’t _actually_ hold Eric’s hand, can’t _actually_ think about kissing Eric on the beach, can’t _actually_ continue keeping himself up at night with images of what they could be, of what they _might_ be, in some alternative universe. It’s just craziness and Dele needs to get it all out of his head.

“No,” Dele says. He gives Eric a small, appreciative smile but keeps his hands tucked around his legs. “I’m fine.”

The movie plays out for another thirty minutes and gets more and more horrible. There’s violence every five minutes now and Dele has to keep closing his eyes, holding his breath. They’re still the only people in the cinema and Dele’s petrified that someone might come in and kill them. He wants to leave and go back to the hotel room. He wants to be somewhere safe. On the beach, at home, at Hotspur Way, Anywhere but- 

Dele’s thoughts are derailed when he suddenly feels fingers pushing between his own. His hand is on the seat next to him, and Eric is wordlessly lacing their fingers together.  

_Oh._

Dele lets it happen. He lets Eric’s thumb brush over his finger back and forth in a soothing motion. He lets himself lean into Eric’s touch. 

They don’t say anything, don’t acknowledge it, but they hold hands for the rest of the movie, and every time there’s more violence or something jumps out, they cling to each other. It’s more violent and more bloody and more horrible, and yet, Dele doesn’t actually mind anymore. He feels numb to it now, because every time something scary happens, Eric squeezes his hand. 

It’s the first time that Dele has ever sat through an entire horror movie, and the first time that he’s ever _not_ wanted it to end. The bad guy dies, the innocent people are saved, and Dele gets to spend two hours with Eric stroking the back of his hand and sometimes leaning into him, sometimes pressing his knee outwards so that it touches Dele’s.

When the credits roll and neither of them move from their warm, settled position, Dele reassures himself that it really is just platonic. He loves spending time with Eric, and being here in Marseille with him. He loves that they’ve gone out together and had a really nice night. He loves that he’s got a best friend who he can be silly with and play on the beach with. He loves that behind all the bickering and the childish insults that they throw at each other, there’s also a lot of love. _Andromadele. Pain au chocolat._

In some other universe, those nicknames might mean more. In this one though, they’re just platonic. They’re just best friends. Dele’s not in love. 

He’s not. 

\--

As soon as they step back into the foyer of the hotel, Danny is all over them. He jumps up from one of the sofas in the lounge, clad in a white dressing gown and fluffy slippers, and makes a beeline for them before Dele can get to the lift in time. 

“Where have you two been?” He asks curiously, looking down at his phone screen. “It’s almost 1am.” The hotel lobby is deserted except for the night shift receptionist and, apparently, Danny Rose.  

Eric’s face scrunches into a disapproving glare. “Why are you wearing fluffy slippers?” 

“They’re Gucci, man,” Danny answers, clearly a little offended. 

“You’re as bad as Dele,” Eric mutters. Dele makes a mental note to scold him for that remark tomorrow.

“Where have you been? Harry was looking for you,” Danny says, directing his gaze at Dele. “He said you were sulking.” 

“I wasn’t sulking,” Dele corrects. He can feel himself blushing and he’s far too tired to maintain his composure right now. He thinks back to Harry’s little speech about Eric still being Dele’s best friend. He hopes more than anything that Harry has _not_ told Danny about any of that.

“Why were you sulking?” Eric asks, equally as curious now. 

“I wasn’t-” Dele stops himself short and exhales through his nose. “Why are we having this discussion? What are _you_ still doing up, and why are you hanging around in the lobby?” 

Danny shrugs and makes a face. “Bored, wasn’t I? Can’t sleep in this heat, man.” He turns to Eric. “You had a date tonight, right? How did it go.”

Dele sinks into his heels and wishes the floor would just swallow him up. He doesn’t want to do this - he just wants to go to bed. But now he’s got to stand and listen to Danny and Eric discuss Eric’s date with Alice. 

“Yeah, I did. It was great, actually,” Eric answers easily. 

Dele really, really wants the floor to swallow him up. He’s half tempted to just walk away and leave them both to their conversation, but he knows how weird and petty and childish it will look - and he knows what it might imply. It’s not true, obviously, but he knows how it will look. Like Dele’s jealous, or something. When in actual fact he’s just really tired and wants to go to bed. 

“Yeah, we went to the beach, which was nice. Had a walk along the sand, played in the water a bit. Then we were going to go to this club but turns out it’s closed down, so we went to the cinema instead.”

“Oh,” Danny says, smiling. “Cool, man. What did you see?” 

“Er, film called Hush? It’s a thriller. She found it scary, but I didn’t.” 

Dele stares at the side of Eric’s face in disbelief. Not only is Eric talking about _their_ date, but he’s actually talking about it as if that’s the only real date he went on tonight. And he’s being all cool and nonchalant about it, too. Danny’s buying every word of it.

“So are you seeing her again?” 

“I hope so,” Eric beams. “Yeah, she’s really nice. I enjoy her company a lot.” 

“That’s cool, man. I’m glad it went well.” Danny uses his hand to gesture between Dele and Eric. “So where have you two been then?” 

“Oh, we just went out for a walk because it’s so hot,” Eric explains. “Wanted to cool down a bit before heading back up.” 

Danny nods and clicks his tongue. “Yeah, that’s why I’m down here. Aircon in my room doesn’t work properly.” 

“Ours creaks,” Eric laughs. Dele didn’t even know that Eric had noticed the creaky A/C. He’s usually so oblivious to these things. The guy could sleep through a tornado. “Anyway, we’re going to go to bed,” Eric adds as he pats Danny’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, cool, me too. I’ll see you in training tomorrow- or later, I guess.” 

Eric laughs and tells Danny to go to bed, and then he quietly drags Dele over to the lifts and they stand in front of it, waiting in silence. Sometimes Dele looks to his right, at the side profile of Eric’s face. The moment Eric turns to meet his gaze, Dele bites down his smile and looks away. _I enjoy her company a lot._

“I enjoy your company too, Diet,” Dele says when they lift _dings_ in front of them and they step inside. They both turn on their heels to face the closing doors. Dele isn’t looking at Eric’s face but he _knows_ Eric is smiling right now. 

They step out on the second floor and pad down the silent hallway to room 204. _Like us._ Dele can’t stop the sentimental thought floating through his mind every time he sees the brass numbers on the wooden door. _Twenty and four._

“Tired,” Eric grunts.

They close the door behind them and peel off shirts and jumpers and trousers still brushed with sand and sea salt. Dele discards his somewhere on the floor and slips into the bathroom in just his boxers to brush his teeth. He stares at himself in the mirror, watches his reflection staring back at him, toothbrush whizzing around his teeth. 

He lifts his hand to wave and the reflection does too. Dele smiles around his toothbrush and thinks about alternative universes. 

 _Are you really me?_ His tired mind wonders. 

He finishes brushing and spits out the toothpaste into the sink. When he looks back up, he stares at himself in the mirror and relaxes his shoulders. He’s just listening to Eric fumble around in the room, hanging his clothes up or something. The A/C is on and creaking, the mini-fridge is humming, and then Dele hears Eric collapse onto his bed. A few seconds later, the lights go out in the bedroom.

Dele looks at his own reflection. His gaze drops to his heart - thumping away slowly, methodically. In some other universe, maybe Dele and Eric sleep in the same bed again. In some other universe, maybe Dele lets himself think about those things that are keeping him up at night. And maybe, in some universe far away in deep, deep space, Eric thinks about those things too. 

“You coming bed?” Eric calls out groggily. Dele sighs under his breath and shakes his head at himself. _Just tired,_ he mumbles. _Not thinking clearly._

Dele turns out the bathroom light and ambles back into the bedroom in the darkness. He walks until his knees knock against the bedframe of his bed, the one closest to the door, and then he falls down on it. 

The bed doesn’t dip quite right, and the duvet is all wrong, like there’s something, or someone-

“Eric?” Dele breathes. His heart leaps into his mouth when Eric hums in response. 

They don’t talk about it. They don’t ask questions or voice the fact that Eric has no actual reason to sleep in Dele’s bed tonight. They don’t acknowledge that it’s too hot, too muggy, or that any other teammate would find this extremely weird. They don’t say anything at all. 

They just go to sleep, with the same distance between them that they had in the taxi. It feels bigger than all of space and it’s infinite stars combined.

In some other universe, Dele closes the gap between them and kisses Eric the way he does in his dreams. But he’s too tired for that and it’s not even real, anyway. It’s just dreams. So in this universe, he falls asleep facing Eric, and Eric falls asleep facing Dele, and somewhere in the space between them, their hands brush against each other and settle there, _just_ touching. 

And that’s enough. 


End file.
